Isaac H. Bonsall was born around 1833 in Cincinnati, Ohio, to Joseph and Eliza Bonsall. He grew up and attended school in Cincinnati, and his father died sometime before 1850. He married Susan M. Merrill on September 14, 1856, and the couple apparently had no children. According to an early biographer, he moved to Leavenworth, Kansas, around 1857 and “took active part in the political questions of that time.” He was a “free state man,” and he opposed the fraudulent pro-slavery Lecompton Constitution. He moved to New Orleans, Louisiana, in December 1859 and reportedly “stayed there as long as a Northern man dared.” He returned to Cincinnati in July 1860.

 

He enlisted in the Union army on September 2, 1862, and he mustered in as a sergeant in Company H of the 2^nd Ohio Militia Infantry. He mustered out on October 4, 1862. He spent the rest of the war working as a photographer. He returned to Cincinnati after the war, and by 1870, he owned $1,000 of personal property. He moved to Arkansas City, Kansas, around 1872. He supported the Republican Party. He was elected justice of the peace in 1874, and he served until 1883. He also served as a city clerk, a police judge, and a census enumerator for the 1880 federal census.

 

According to a local writer, he was “an honest man, faithful to his party, his country and home, true to his trust, and a public spirited, go-ahead man in the community where he resides.” He got divorced sometime in the 1880s. In 1909, he “suffered a severe shock in falling from a ladder in the Masonic hall while doing some janitor work.” He never fully recovered, and he died in Arkansas City on September 6, 1909.

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