This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Surnames: Bunce Classification: Query Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/an/XY.2ADE/137.188.195.203.207.210.1 Message Board Post: The following is from The Encyclopedia of Louisville by the University Press of Kentucky and was apparently released last year. This was on page 146. BUNCE, JOSEPH H. (b New York, 1825?; d ?) Mayor, Bunce was MAYOR of Louisville for less than a year in 1869. He ran for mayor against fellow Democrats JOHN BAXTER and police chief Robert Gilchriest in 1869. Bunce led the party’s “bolter” faction and defeated Baxter even though Baxter had won the party’s nomination and had received the endorsement of the Courier Journal. Bunce received 4,266 votes in the April 3 contest to Baxter’s 3965 and Gilchriest’s 2340. In 1870 the City’s Charter was amended by the state legislature, and the mayor’s term of office was extended from two years to three. Bunce was given the option of serving out his two-year term or running for reelection to a three-year term in March. Bunce chose the latter and was defeated by 580 votes by Baxter, who had garnered the backing of influential politicians and business leaders. Bunce was also elected to the City Council for the Twelfth Ward in 1866 and to the Board of Aldermen in 1867 and 1868. He was Board of Aldermen president in 1868. Bunce worked as a steamboat captain in Louisville in the late 1850s to the mid-1860s. He then joined Griffith & Co., a produce dealer and wholesale grocer. The firm then became Griffith, Bunce, & Co., located on Main between Third and Fourth Streets. About 1870, Bunce went into the gate-and-fence manufacturing business with Alexander Hunter. The firm, Bunce & Hunter, was located on Third St. between Main St. and River Rd. In 1872 he became president of the Louisville Bromophyte Fertilizer Co. In 1873 Bunce & Hunter acquired the Kentucky Gate and Fence Co. in Portland. Bunce was married to Josephine Bunce from Kentucky. The couple had four children: Alice, Charles, Hattie, and Marshal. The family lived in Portland. See Courier Journal Oct 9, 1881, March 6, 1870, April 4 and 5 1869. Provided by Tom Owen, Associate Archivist and Community Relation Associate, University of Louisville, University Archives and Records Center. I received a later email with the information that the City of Louisville Archives, by phone, had provided the following information: The Bunce home in Portland was on the site of the present branch library