Elizabeth Middleton Bonner, Editor

PARADISE SUN
Light for All

June 6, 1832

ABOUT TOWN

Nathaniel and Elizabeth Bonner would like their friends and neighbors to know that they are in receipt of a letter from their daughter Birdie, who has arrived safely in New Orleans to take up the study of medicine with Dr. Paul de Guise Savard and Dr. Phillipe Savard at that city’s Free Clinic. The doctors Savard are the brothers of Ben Savard of Downhill House.

Further good news from the Bonner clan: This past week Lily Ballentyne née Bonner was delivered safely of a healthy girl, her fourth daughter. On the same day Martha Bonner née Kirby added twin boys to her brood for a total of five sons. It seems that age and wisdom have not tempered the spirit of friendly competition between the original Bonner twins, Lily and Daniel, and their respective spouses.

Ethan Middleton has announced plans for yet another addition to the schoolhouse.

PARADISE SUN
Light for All

Tuesday, September 17, 1833

ABOUT TOWN

Yesterday three of our young men departed Paradise for Manhattan, where they will take up studies at Columbia College. They are Henry Savard of Downhill House, and Nathan and Adam Scott-Bonner of Ivy House. All three will take up residence with Nathan and Adam’s father Luke, a face well known to us here in Paradise.

We wish them great success.

With this issue of the Paradise Sun, the editorship is passed on to Mr. Lawrence March, one of our teachers. Mr. March would like to thank Mrs. Bonner for her hard work in establishing the newspaper, and hopes she will continue to contribute editorials on the topics of the day.

Lawrence J. March, Editor

PARADISE SUN
Light for All

Friday, January 3, 1834

OBITUARY

With great sadness we report that Mrs. Curiosity Freeman, the oldest surviving citizen of the original settlers of Paradise, died quietly in the first hours of this new year, 1834. Her daughter, Mrs. Daisy Hench, and her dear friends Mrs. Elizabeth Bonner and Mrs. Hannah Savard were by her side. She was 99 years old.

Mrs. Freeman was born into slavery on a farm in Pennsylvania in the spring of the year 1734. In 1762, when a Quaker Abolition Society purchased manumission papers for herself and her husband Galileo, the young couple came to Paradise to take up employment with Judge Alfred Middleton and family. After Judge Middleton’s passing, she kept house for Dr. Richard Todd for many years.

Burial services were conducted on Thursday, January 2, in the course of an unusually mild and pleasant winter afternoon. There were more than two hundred people in attendance on very short notice. Many of those who attended had been helped into the world by Mrs. Freeman, who was an exceptional midwife.

The wisest and most generous of souls, Mrs. Freeman was a loving mother, the most caring of friends, a gifted healer, and a constant source of stories. War, disaster, illness, in all of life’s challenges she remained the steadiest of lights. It is not too much to say that Mrs. Freeman was the rock on which Paradise was built. She will be sorely missed.

She is survived by her daughter Daisy Hench and her son Almanzo Freeman, as well as six grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. Her beloved husband Galileo preceeded her in death by more than thirty years.

The Savard, Bonner, and Ballentyne families, with whom she was especially close, and who considered her one of their own, are also in mourning.

PARADISE SUN
Light for All

Monday, April 11, 1836

ADVERTISEMENTS

Gabriel Bonner of Lake in the Clouds has a large number of especially fine marten and beaver pelts taken this winter. Before he arranges to have them taken to market in Manhattan, he would like to offer them for sale to any resident who might be interested.

This past Saturday Mrs. Daisy Hench, a widow since her husband Joshua passed on five years ago, married Levi Fiddler, a six-year widower. A small party was held at Orchard House. We wish the couple every happiness.

Mr. Daniel Bonner and his wife Martha announce the birth of their sixth child, a daughter to be called Jennet. We wish this newest Bonner good humor and fortitude growing up with the five Bonner boys, well known in Paradise for their abundant energy and inventive natures.

PARADISE SUN
Light for All

The Week of Monday, May 28, 1838

We have received word of a steamboat accident on the Hudson River which has taken the lives of two of our citizens. Ethan and Callie Middleton were returning home from Manhattan when the Steamboat Reliance was rocked by an explosion and sank almost immediately. There were no survivors.

Nicholas Wilde, Callie’s half brother and Ethan’s partner, traveled to Albany to bring the bodies home to Paradise for burial. He was accompanied by Levi Fiddler.

The Middletons were much admired by their friends and neighbors, and dearly loved by the families they leave behind. Ethan was responsible for the revitalization of Paradise by means of careful planning, innovative design, and meticulous building practices. While they had no children of their own, the Middletons took in the five children left behind when Ethan’s cousin Jennet Scott Bonner died in the typhoid epidemic of 1830.

They leave behind Nathan, Adam, and Alasdair Scott-Bonner, Mariah Mayfair, and Isabel March, their spouses and children, as well as grieving aunts, uncles, and cousins.

PARADISE SUN
Light for All

Tuesday, May 5, 1840

Gabriel Bonner was in town today and stopped by the newspaper office to announce that his wife, Annie, has given birth to their fourth child and second daughter, who will be called Carrie. With such unanticipated incentive, Gabriel plans to move ahead quickly with the plans to rebuild the old homestead at Lake in the Clouds.