Bonnie, Illinois

The village of Bonnie, in Jefferson County, is said to take its name from the daughter of a local businessman. Back in the eighteen nineties, P. M.

Johnston and his brother Ambrose were trying to bring a railroad through this part of southern Illinois. They organized a company, lobbied investors, and eventually secured a route through a settlement that had no official name. It was Johnston's neighbor, Mrs.

Rodey Kelley, who suggested calling it Bonnie, after Johnston's daughter Bonnie Johnston. The line was eventually absorbed by the Chicago and Eastern Illinois Railroad, and Bonnie later became a village. Today it is home to a few hundred residents, a quiet place that owes its name and its existence to the ambitions of men who wanted a railroad and a woman who gave the place its character.