The large white house at 7 Marion Road, along with its shed, barn, and garage, has a long and varied history. Today it is called The Bonney House and is divided into condos. Before this, it was a shop called Dempsey’s Village Sampler, and before that, it was the home of Phil and Dorothy Bray and had both an inground pool and a bomb shelter. However, its history gets more interesting the further back you go. The house, which is an excellent example of the late Federalist style of architecture, was built in 1826 for George Bonney. George Bonney was involved in Rochester politics and served as a representative to the General Court in Boston from 1844-1845. Primarily though, Bonney was a businessman, and his house contained both a tavern and a store.
One of the items sold at the store was coarse quality ready-to-wear clothing. It’s believed to be the first store in America to do so. The coarse clothing business began with Bonney’s southern connections. He had a winter home and business in Savannah, Georgia. Along with some associates (one of whom was his brother, Charles), he sent his schooners south to load up with cotton, which was made into a coarse cloth called “slop cloth” upon arriving in the north. The fabric was then made into clothing and shipped back south to sell to plantation owners who bought it to clothe their slaves.
Mary Hall Leonard, an area historian, wrote that the demand for this type of clothing created work (slop work) for Rochester women who sewed clothing, as well as a popular garment called the “Marseilles vest.” For many years, Bonney’s boats went up and down the coast bringing cotton north and clothing south. The Rochester Female Missionary Society, begun in 1816, got much of its funding for missionary and parish work by doing this slop work for George Bonney.
This coarse cloth was also used to make the clothing carried on whaling ships. When crew members’ clothes became unwearable, they could get new clothing from the ship’s commissary. (I’m pretty sure the cost of the clothes was deducted from any money they made at the end of the voyage). The “slop” name of the cloth, over time, was transferred to the seaman’s slop chests.
The house stayed in the Bonney family through the 1800s. In 1903 it became the summer home of Charles J. Holmes, a banker from Fall River, who may have been a descendant of the Charles Holmes who lived at 10 Marion Road. In 1936, it was identified on maps as Holmlands, which including its grounds, had a much larger footprint than it has today.
By Connie Eshbach