held the first position as disbursing officer ever given to a woman by the US government. Winifred grew up on a farm in Lombard, Illinois, attending a number of private schools in the Chicago area. After attempting a career as an actress, became a journalist, writing for a short time in Chicago before landing a job at the San Francisco Examiner in 1890. She was married in June 1891 to Orlow Black, a fellow worker on a morning San Francisco newspaper. They had one son in 1892, Jeffrey Black, who died young. On September 13, 1897, she filed for divorce, charging Black with cruelty. "The divorce complaint pictures Mrs. Black as the breadwinner of the family." After the divorce she moved to Denver, Colorado. In the late 1920s she was back to California, living at 37 Florence St., San Francisco, California, and married to Charles A. Bonfils. They had two children, Winifred Bonfils Barker, who married C. O. Barker, and Eugene Napoleon Bonfils, who died young. Death On the night of May 25, 1936, Bonfils died. The announcement in The San Bernadino Daily Sun reported: To the moment of her death she insisted she was neither a "sob sister nor a special writer." "I'm just a plain, practical all-around newspaper woman," said the white-haired 73-year-old woman who began and ended her career in writing for the W. R. Hearst newspapers. "I'd rather smell the printers' ink and hear the presses go 'round than go to any grand opera in the world," she once said. Her funeral was a civic ceremony in San Francisco, with her body lying in state in the City Hall. She was buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Colma, California. References External links Encyclopædia Britannica entry (subscription required) 1863 births 1936 deaths People from Chilton, Wisconsin American newspaper reporters and correspondents American columnists San Francisco Examiner people Galveston Hurricane of 1900 Journalists from California Journalists from Wisconsin Writers from California Writers from Wisconsin American women columnists 19th-century American journalists 19th-century American women writers 20th-century American journalists 20th-century American women writers 20th-century American writers