Adair F. Bonney was a belle of Scituate, Massachusetts, a direct descendant of John Alden of the Mayflower, and by heritage a Daughter of the American Revolution. Her name had graced a schooner owned by her wealthy merchant father. When she met and married George Yenetschi, a first generation Greek American who ran a Boston liquor business, eyebrows must have lifted. Nevertheless, the marital bond held until Yenetchi’s death at age 75.
Shown here, George Varcelia Yenetchi was born in Charlestown, Massachusetts, in 1844, the son of Sophia Hutchinson and Constantine Yenetchi, a seaman in the U.S. Navy. George was a young man of considerable ambition. After graduating from the good local schools, he attended the Boston Commercial College (actually a secondary school) preparing for a career in business. Although his early occupations have gone unrecorded, by his mid-20s George had entered the liquor trade.
As a young bachelor working in Boston, George lodged in Young’s Hotel located on Court Street in the Financial District. One of the first buildings in Boston to have electric lights, the hotel, shown here, not only attracted celebrities like Mark Twain and Rutherford B. Hayes but as well the college sporting crowd, drawn by the smartly decorated billiards room. According to one observer: “Here one may see in the afternoon or evening the swellest students from Harvard in patent leather shoes exhibiting the very latest fashions in dress and toting canes like small trees knobbed with silver.” The young Greek looked and learned.
Meanwhile in Scituate, above, Adair Bonney was born in 1862, the daughter of Louisa Francis and Edward Hyde Bonney. Through her mother Adair was a ninth descendant of John Alden, a member of the Mayflower crew who stayed in the colony and married Priscilla Mullins. Their romance has been celebrated in American folklore and poetry. Adair also was the great granddaughter of Ruben Bates (1735-1835) who served with distinction in the Revolutionary War. As a result she also was eligible for that exclusive auxiliary.
Her father, a leading merchant of Massachusetts, was a dealer in a wide variety of merchandise, including fresh fish, lobsters, wood, coal, hay and naval goods. Shown here is an ad for his many commodities, claiming that Bonney maintained his own wharf. He also had a fleet of fishing vessels. Delighted with his only daughter, when she was ten years old Bonney named a newly commissioned 200 ton schooner after her. Three years later, however, the ship met with disaster in a storm and the Adair F. Bonney went to the bottom of the Atlantic, never to be seen again.
The Bonney wealth allowed her family to give Adair a college education at the Massachusetts State Normal School in Bridgewater where she trained to be a teacher, graduating in 1878. Records indicate that she taught for eleven years in local schools and likely was teaching when she met and married George Yenetchi..
How the couple met is unclear. At age 46 George was firmly into bachelorhood when they married in March 1891, a ceremony conducted by a Unitarian minister. Adair was 29, at that time a late age to marry for a woman as rich and prominent as she. It suggests that having been well educated she had been careful in her choice of a mate. The couple would have two sons, George V. Junior, and Ivan.
With their marriage, George moved to Scituate into a household that included two servant girls, sisters from Ireland. The dwelling was an easy walking distance to the train station, shown here. It facilitated George’s daily commute to his Boston headquarters at 142 Blackstone Street to manage what had now become a prosperous and expanding liquor house.
After two short stints working with partners, George struck out on his own. He was advertising as the successor to an earlier Boston liquor business dating from 1830. Shown here from an 1882 Boston newspaper is his notice as a dealer in foreign and domestic wines and liquors at wholesale and retail. In the small print, in a reference to his Greek heritage, George offered for one dollar a bottle of “Marou Cordial” as “a beverage used by the ladies of Greece at afternoon parties.” The photo below shows George, left of the doorway with stick in hand, posing with employees in front of his establishment.
Yenetchi was selling his liquor in a variety of modes, including large stoneware jugs for wholesaling to customers operating Boston’s many saloons, hotels and restaurants. He was receiving shipments of whiskey by the barrel, rectifying
(blending) them on the premises and marketing the results. For retail customers George was providing mini jugs each with a swallow or two of whiskey to be given away to the favored. He gave his flagship whiskey his middle name, “Varcelia.”
George continued to operate his liquor house successfully throughout the 1880s and 1890s, and well into the 20th Century, retiring after approximately 50 years in the Boston liquor trade. A well-known local figure as he strolled around Scituate, even at 75 he seemed in good health. In October 1919, however, George was suddenly stricken and died only a few hours later. The cause was not revealed in his obituary. At his death he and Adair had been married some 30 years.
My efforts to find the burial places for this couple so far has been fruitless. I have found the monument for George’s father, Constantine. Shown here, it stands in Woodlawn Cemetery, Everett, Massachusetts where George’s mother, Sophia, is also interred. I am hopeful that a descendant will see this story and supply the information and, I hope, a photo of the graves of the debutante and the whiskey dealer, a husband and wife who seemingly made a success of their “odd couple” marriage.
Note: This post was suggested by a mention on Robin Preston’s “pre-pro” website. Robin in turn credits the great-grandson of George Yenetchi for information and for providing the photo above of the liquor dealer outside his establishment.
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