John Henry Boner

Who was John Henry Boner?

John Henry Boner, was an American editor and poet.

Boner was born in Salem's. Moravian community. He was educated locally, and at the age of thirteen, he was apprenticed to a newspaper office. In 1865, he started his own Salem newspaper, but by then Boner had become affiliated with the Republican Party, and this bias caused the failure of the paper. Through his political connections, Boner was able to find employment as reading clerk of the North Carolina constitutional convention of 1868 and was chief clerk of the North Carolina House of Representatives in 1869-70. He left North Carolina and entered the civil service in the United States Government Printing Office in Washington, D.C., where he worked until 1886, as a compositor and then as a proofreader. That he was appreciated by his associates is shown by the fact that in 1878 he was president of Columbia Union, No. 101, in which office "he showed executive ability and a thorough knowledge of parliamentary practice, and he gave the union a conservative and safe administration". In 1883 his first book of poems entitled "Whispering Pines" was published.