Prudence Williams was born in 1788 in Chatham, Alamance County, North Carolina. She was the oldest daughter and second child of Rev. William Williams Jr., and his wife, Rachel (Kemp) Williams. Her father was a Quaker minister and missionary who made many pioneering missionary journeys to spread the Word according to the Society of Friends in America. In December 1792 the Williams family received a "Removal Certificate" from the Cane Creek MM (Quaker) in North Carolina for the Lost Creek MM in Jefferson County, Tennessee. There, the family met the family of Daniel and Mary Bonine, Quakers from Pennsylvania who had emigrated south to Tennessee also as Quaker missionaries and farmers.
On September 7, 1808, Prudence Williams married David Bonine, oldest son of Daniel Bonine, in a Quaker Ceremony in either Blount or Jefferson County, Tennessee. Their first child, William Bonine, was born in July 1809, in Maryville, Blount Co., Tennessee.
Prudence (Williams) and David Bonine had 12 children:[1]
The first three of their children were born in eastern Tennessee. When his father Daniel Bonine and other local Quakers decided to leave slave-owning state of Tennessee for "free" territories north of the Ohio River, newly pacified by American victories over the Indians there, David and his pregnant wife followed. A family source says they began their epic journey north in February 1814 and that their son Joshua Clark Bonine was born just after they arrived in the newly-founded Quaker settlement of Whitewater, in what would become Wayne County, Indiana (statehood Dec. 1816). Prudence's father, Rev. William Williams, led the way as he was familiar with the area, having visited it in earlier missionary journeys. He was the first European-origin settler to lay the foundations for his home in what became the town of Richmond, Indiana.[2]
David and Prudence Bonine raised their family on their family farm near Richmond, Wayne County, Indiana, for the next 15 years. In about 1830, a few years after Rev. William's death in Richmond, they decided to move again, traveling west to Sangamon County, Illinois. There, Prudence, at 43 years old, had a baby daughter who did not survive. Nonetheless, they continued to farm and participate in Quaker activities in their new home for many years. They visited their offspring, spread across Indiana, Illinois and Michigan from time to time. It was on one such visit to their son, Isaac Bonine, and his family, near Muncie, Delaware County, Indiana, that Prudence (Williams) Bonine fell ill and she passed away there on November 25, 1857. Her burial spot is not known.[3]
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