Mary Lucinda Bonney was born on June 8, 1816 at Hamilton, New York, the daughter of Benjamin and Lucinda (Wilder) Bonney and the descendant of Thomas Bonney who emigrated from Sandwich, England, in 1634 and settled in Duxbury, Massachussets. Her grandfathers, Benjamin Bonney and Abel Wilder, both of Chesterfield, Massachussets, fought in the Revolutionary War. Her father took part in the War of 1812 and later became a colonel of the 165th Regiment of the New York state militia.
In 1835 she graduated from the Troy Female Seminary.
She taught in Jersey City, New York City, De Ruyter, New York, Troy Female Seminary, Beaufort and Robertville, South Carolina, Providence, Rhode Island, and Miss Phelps's school in Philadelphia.
In 1850 she established the Chestnut Street Female Seminary of Philadelphia and in 1883 moved the school to Ogontz, Pennsylvania, and changed its name to the Ogontz School for Young Ladies.
In 1887 she retired from active management of the school. Her energies were not confined to the classroom but extended to problems of the day. When the growing consciousness of the facts of white invasion of Indian lands, the severity with which the army quelled the Indians in such cases as Chivington's massacre, and the entire disregard of Indian rights on the Black Hills' reservation aroused in the eastern states a reform movement in behalf of the Indians, she bore an active part. Indignant over the government's injustice to the Indians, she instigated a protest in a petition which she took to the White House on Feburary 14, 1880.
With Mrs. Amelia Stone Quinton she helped form the Women's National Indian Association with the purpose of stirring public opinion and legislative action in favor of the Indians. She was the first president of the organization and contributed liberally to its cause. The measures sought were partly realized in the Dawes Act of 1887, which provided for Indian ownership of land in severalty and for Indian attainment of citizenship with full personal, property, and political rights. The association also had an educational program for Indians that consisted of missions, libraries, schools, and loan funds. Interested in missionary work, she helped to found the Women's Union Missionary Society. In June 1888 she went to the world's missionary convention in London.
Then she and her husband went to live in Hamilton, New York, but their companionship was of short duration as he died in October 1890. She continued to live in Hamilton with her brother, Benjamin Franklin Bonney, until her death ten years later.
She turned out to be the most important woman in the Native American movement for their protection of land. She was also involved in the two early movements for women's education. She founded the Ogontz School for Young Ladies in Philadelphia. In collaboration with Amelia Stone Quinton she founded the Women's National Indian Association.
She was married to a fellow-delegate, Thomas Rambaut, a Baptist minister and reformer, formerly president of William Jewell College at Liberty, Missouri.
