Honoring the wife of a man of law.
Robert W. Bonynge (1863-1939)
Alida Bonynge was the woman behind the man, the devoted wife whose quiet support allowed her husband to climb rapidly to national prominence.
Born in New York on March 31, 1860, Mary Alida Riblet was one of three children of William Hunter Riblet, who was president of the Peter Cooper Insurance Co. He was commissioned a brevet colonel at the start of the Civil War and commanded the Seventh Regiment. The Riblet family traced their ancestry to another patriot, Peter Riblet, who served as a young private in the Colonial Army. The family liked to recall that Peter’s role in the Revolution was delivering a load of hay to Gen. George Washington at his Valley Forge headquarters.
Alida Riblet was graduated in 1880 from the Normal School, which is now Hunter College, in New York City. When she was 26, she married Robert William Bonynge, a brilliant young lawyer of 23.
Robert Bonynge was born in New York City on Sept. 8, 1863, the son of Robert and Susan Burchell Bonynge. He received a bachelor of arts degree from the City College of New York in 1882 at age 19. Three years later, he had received both a master’s degree from City College and a law degree from Columbia University. In 1885, he was admitted to the New York Bar, and decided to use his experience to benefit young law students preparing for the bar exam. He and a colleague, Edwin C. Ward, analyzed the questions asked on the exams over a nine-year period, then arranged and classified them according to subjects, showing the number of times each question had been repeated. Their published work was “1,500 questions propounded to the applicants for admission to the New York State Bar.” Such organization and attention to detail was a hallmark of his professional legal career.
Robert Bonynge and Alida Riblet were married in New York on Jan. 20, 1886. After Robert had practiced law in New York for three years, the young couple decided the city did not provide enough of a challenge. They moved to Colorado, where he established a law practice in Denver.
The Bonynges hadn’t been in Colorado long before Robert took his first plunge into politics. He was elected a member of the Colorado House of Representatives in 1893 and 1894. From 1896 to 1898, he served as a member of the Colorado Board of Pardons. The next step was national politics. When Theodore Roosevelt visited Denver, Robert Bonynge was in charge of planning his route through the city. In 1900, Robert ran for the U.S. House of Representatives from Colorado’s First District and lost.
But, as opponents learned time and again during his long and distinguished career, Robert Bonynge was exceptionally tenacious. When election time came around in 1902, he was again a candidate and, it appeared, was again unsuccessful. His opponent in that election, John F. Shafroth, was declared the winner. But Robert refused to admit defeat. He eventually exposed gross fraud that had been committed in the election and introduced the case of Bonynge v. Shafroth before the House Committee on Elections. In a dramatic address before the House of Representatives, Shafroth conceded defeat and withdrew. A triumphant Robert Bonynge was finally seated on Feb.16, 1904, midway through the second session of the 58th Congress. Robert was one of 197 members on the Republican side of the aisle in a House that was divided fairly evenly under the administration of Theodore Roosevelt.
Robert had barely taken his seat in the House when it was time to begin a new campaign. He won handily in 1904, and while the 59th Congress was in session, he served on the House Committee on Immigration and Naturalization and submitted a report on the Immigration Bureau in 1906. He won re-election that year. However, he was defeated in the next election, and it was the last time he ran for public office. When the 60th Congress adjourned in March 1909, Robert returned to his law practice in Denver.
In 1908 Robert was appointed a member of the National Monetary Commission, which he served on until 1912. During those years, he delivered addresses throughout the country, under the auspices of the National Citizens League of Chicago, advocating monetary reforms. In a speech to the St. Paul Association of Commerce on “Reform Banking Legislation,” he advanced his plan “to break Wall Street control of American finances, to remedy the defects of the present banking system, and to aid and protect business by preventing panics.”
In November 1912, Robert and Alida returned to New York, where Robert again established a law practice. In 1916, he was named chief counsel for the New York State Industrial Commission. During the two years he served, he organized its legal department.
Meanwhile, Robert Bonynge had earned a reputation as an outstanding campaigner, and he traveled with Calvin Coolidge during his bid for the vice presidency as Warren G. Harding’s running mate in 1920.
It was from President Harding in 1923 that Robert Bonynge received the most important appointment of his career. Acting under an agreement of the Treaty of Berlin signed on Aug. 10, 1922, the president named him Agent of the United States before the German-American Mixed Claims Commission, succeeding Robert C. Morris (who later also established a fund in The New York Community Trust). Robert Bonynge spent the next 16 years in that position. In addition, from 1925 to 1927, he served as United States Agent before the Tripartite Claims Commission, involving the United States, Austria, and Hungary.
One of Robert’s first official acts was to file a brief on behalf of 12 life insurance companies against Germany to compensate for losses paid to Americans in connection with the sinking of the RMS Lusitania in May 1915, which claimed more than 120 American lives. Within a year of his appointment, he had adjusted over 200 claims for which U.S. citizens received settlements totaling more than $12 million. By 1930, he had handled over 24,000 claims and secured adjustments of more than $300 million, thus, according to The New York Times account of his accomplishment, “bringing order out of chaos left by the World War.”
But the high point of his work with the Mixed Claims Commission was his persistence in handling the infamous and long-drawn-out “Black Tom Case.”
Early in the morning of July 30, 1916, fire broke out at the Black Tom terminal of the Lehigh Valley Railroad Co. in New York Harbor. The terminal was full of railroad cars loaded with ammunition, and it was a likely target for German saboteurs. The explosion killed four people and destroyed an estimated $20 million worth of military goods. Six months later, a similar fire destroyed a Canadian Car and Foundry Co. plant in Kingsland, New Jersey. Although public opinion held strongly for sabotage, the evidence was circumstantial, and the case against Germany would be difficult to prove.
Among those convinced of German responsibility was Robert Bonynge. He fought for years to have the case decided in favor of the United States. He began his presentation in the fall of 1930, claiming $22 million in damages for the Black Tom fire and $18 million for the Kingsland incident. However, based on what the commission regarded as circumstantial evidence, the case was decided in November 1930 in favor of Germany.
The news stunned Robert, who told New York Times reporters, “The decision comes as a complete surprise to me. It seems almost incredible…. In my opinion, the testimony in both cases overwhelmingly establishes that Germany was responsible for both disasters.”
He was determined to find proof to support his conviction. In January 1931, Robert asked for a rehearing of the case, and the following July he filed a petition requesting that the case be reopened. In January 1932, after months of research, he was able to file new evidence seeking to prove that German agents were responsible. Years passed. The case disappeared from the news. But it was never out of Robert Bonynge’s mind.
As a result of his continuing efforts, the United States began proceedings in March 1936, to reopen the Black Tom Case. The following May, the Claims Commission held a new series of hearings. Robert Bonynge was off on another of his many trips to Germany. Finally, in the spring of 1937, the commission reversed its earlier decision and the German government was ordered to pay the heavy claims laid against it. An admiring colleague called Robert’s handling of the case “a monument to his ability, industry, integrity, and resourcefulness…. The story of his fight, after apparent defeat, in exposing fraud, deceit, trickery, and perjury affords the material for a most dramatic chronicle, play or movie. Had Mr. Bonynge been a publicist or a self-advertiser, the public would have heard more of his great attainments.”
In 1939, when the City College of New York awarded its Townsend Harris medal to its illustrious alumnus, it paid tribute to Robert Bonynge: “Maker of law in the Legislature of Colorado and in the House of Representatives, advisor to national and state bodies of economic and social significance, you became, at last, the skillful and trusted agent of the entire nation in some of its most intricate international adjudications. For 16 years, you’ve labored patiently, bravely, and wisely to settle, with good to your own nation and without harm to others, the vexing problems of equity and justice arising from the economic confusion of the World War. In you, your alma mater finds particular reason to rejoice.”
Absorbed as he was in his duties with the commission, Robert Bonynge was a man of many interests. He was a member of a number of legal societies, including the American Bar Association, the New York State Bar Association, the New York County Lawyer’s Association, and the Association of the Bar of the City of New York. He kept up old acquaintances through his college fraternity, Delta Kappa Epsilon. He belonged to the Veterans Association of the Seventh Regiment, the Union League Club, the University Club of Washington, D.C., and the West End Association in New York, which he served as president in 1932 and 1933. He also was active in the National Republican Club, served on its Executive Committee from 1914 to 1916, and was its president in 1917 and 1918. At St. Matthew’s and St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church on West 84th Street, where he was recalled by the rector as being “a very faithful man,” he was a vestryman from 1922 until his death.
At his side through this long, varied, and rewarding career was Alida Bonynge. When the voters of Colorado’s First District elected him to the House of Representatives, Robert and Alida moved to Washington, D.C., returning to Denver for cool, pleasant summers, a habit they continued through his work with the National Monetary Commission. Later, when Robert traveled to Europe—Germany, Switzerland, the Hague—on behalf of the Mixed Claims Commission, Alida went with him. And when they established a home in New York, she presided graciously over their apartment overlooking Central Park. Their home was furnished with fine antiques and Oriental rugs, cut glass and family silver, and hung with Robert’s favorite prints and paintings. Having suffered a great loss when their only child, a boy, died soon after his birth in Colorado, they delighted in visits from many nieces and nephews and other young relatives. They often attended the theater, enjoyed the opera, and were frequent guests at the White House.
On August 8, 1937, a year and a half after the gala celebration of their golden wedding anniversary, Alida died at age 77. To honor her, Robert planned in his will for the establishment of the M. Alida Bonynge Memorial in The New York Community Trust.
When Robert William Bonynge died two years later, on Sept. 22, 1939, more than 200 friends and colleagues gathered to pay final tribute to the man they remembered as “very modest, unassuming, and retiring, yet strong in character and convictions; frank, manly, square, sound and forceful in expression and conduct … a most useful and valuable citizen and a genuine friend.”