Bonar, James Crayton, 1829-1892.

James Crayton Bonar was born in 1829. It is unclear when Bonar made the journey to the Washington Territory but he was the second European settler in the Entiat River Valley in Washington Territory. From March 1887 through Dec. 1889 he kept a daily memorandum of his activities and the people he visited. In his diary he describes frequent trips to the town of Orondo, WA for supplies. Bonar went back to Minnesota and Indiana for the summer of 1890. On Sept. 27, 1892 Dr. & Mrs. Mead drove past a field on their way to pick up provisions. The field had a scare-crow in it all summer. When they passed the field, it looked like a body of a man slumped on the ground but they thought it was probably the scarecrow blown over. When they returned, they decided to investigate and walked over to it. The doctor found it to be the body of their neighbor, J.C. Bonar. He had passed away the day before without a struggle from heart disease. This was the first non-Native American burial in the Entiat River Valley. At a later date his remains were placed in the Entiat Cemetery next to his wife's remains.