The Kennedys Who Went To Wisconsin

William James Kennedy and Emily Moore

I’ve recently met Don, from Milwaukee WI, who is doing research for his granddaughter: a descendant of William Kennedy Jr. who was an older brother to my great x 2 grandfather Robert Kennedy. Like many of us who are researching our ancestry, it appears that his drive is to understand the stories of past family members as a gift of story for the next generation. I find myself compiling this website with my own niece in mind. She’ll be turning 1 year old this year and soon enough she will be ready for all of the stories I can tell her about her foundations here in Canada… at least on my side of the family. Don seems to be more ambitious as the Kennedy family is not his own side of the family.  He has put great effort into uncovering the story of William and Emily by contacting the Wisconsin Historical Society for records and collecting photographs of the family descendants. Many beautiful photographs of the Kennedys and their family reunion have also been collected and made public by another descendant of William and James (their great granddaughter) named Yvonne. She and Don have been in contact and through their combined efforts I am able to do my part in compiling this into a narrative into the blog entry below. Out of respect for a descendant who does not wish records found by Don to be posted, I am not including images of these documents. Suffice to say that there are records to back up this narrative. Not only does William & Emily‘s story allow us a better glimpse into our Kennedy clan, but it also pieces together the American and Canadian sides of the family.

William James Kennedy was the second child of 16 belonging to farmers William Kennedy & Mary Bridgen. He was baptized in Fallowfield, Ontario, sometime between 1851-1968, and Canadian census dates place his birth date as 23 February, 1851 in Tichborne, Ontario. I gasp when I read the record of his baptism, as it brings the Kennedy ancestors so close to me. While I wasn’t born in Fallowfield, I spent much of my childhood and teenage years living next door, in Kanata, and the name recalls so much for me as I currently live across the country from there.

According to his newspaper obituary, at age 17 (1868) he moved to Wingville township, in the Southwestern corner of the state of Wisconsin and bought land in the village of Montfort. I am unsure what his motivation was to move across the border and leave his family back in Ontario. From all of my research on this family, this question lingers. Two other siblings seem to have moved south also,but not together. The southern part of Wisconsin originally attracted people to mine the land, as it was particularly rich in minerals (especially lead and zinc). However, it soon became apparent that wheat farming was more viable longterm with Grant county’s rich soil, and as William came from a farming family and planned to continue living off the land, this might have been the attractor for him. He likely came to Wisconsin via train which was rapidly being built in WI between 1870 and 1900.

Montfort is the place where he met his future wife, a woman named Emily Jane Moore (1848-1927), daughter of John & Elizabeth. Emily was born in the nearby town of Benton. She and William were married two years after his arrival in Wisconsin, on the 9th of December 1871 in Montford. The wedding was witnessed by George Stevens and Sophia Laird who were both from town. The couple stayed in Montfort, settling on a property at the edge of town next to the flour mill and the train depot (see map below). In 1880, construction on the new Chicago and Tomah line began, linking with Madison by way of the junction next to William’s land. He would have been expected to donate land to the building of these tracks. The railroad also asked the communities along the line to invest money in the railroad in exchange for the building and maintenance of railway depots. By October of 1882, a passenger train left Montfort daily (except Sundays) midmorning, and arrived from its origins in Milwaukee by supper time. There were also one freight and one mixed train that traveled each way, making this location a bustling space of travelers.

I've circled William's property in red

William decided to become a stonemason at some point after moving to Montfort. The income he earned in his profession had to support his and Emily‘s large family of 13 children, 3 of whom died very young (Dora Melissa Kennedy 1879-80, David Walter Kennedy1881-86, and Flossie Kennedy 1896 who died at birth). The ones who survived into adulthood are as follows:

Ina Florence Kennedy (1872-1942) married and became a Womack;  Emily Frances Kennedy(1874-1955), married an Irish immigrant named John T. O’Brien, and raised their family in Montfort; William John Kennedy (1876-1924) worked as a day laborer and farmed while living with the family; Mary Jane “Minnie” Kennedy (1877-1956), married John P. Crawley in 1896 and moved about within the state, then to Philadelphia, before coming back to Wisconsin later in life. She and her husband had 7 children together. There was Effie Phyllis Kennedy (1884-1972), who married to a man named Charles Guilford; Alta Ann Kennedy (1886-1950), who worked in a hotel while living at home, and then lived in Platteville later on; Wallace Oscar Kennedy (1888-1972) mined lead as a young man in the area to help earn his keep, and later became a butcher by trade. He married a woman called Edith Martha Fischer in Antigo and had a daughter. Another son, Elmer Thomas Kennedy (1890-1967), stayed in Wisconsin, and married a woman named Blanche Moore in Illinois. They had five children. Richard Earl Kennedy (1891-1949), stayed in Montfort where he had a farm. He married Dora Markwardt and they had four children together. Isa Irma Kennedy (1898-1969) who became a teacher and supported her widowed mother in her twenties and then married August Schumann. She had a daughter.

This photograph is believed to be taken at Emily Kennedy's funeral (1927). Individuals pictured are all (except one) children of William and Emily. Back row (L-R): Charley Hill (half brother of Emily), Wallace Kennedy, Isa Schuman, Earl Kennedy, Emily Frances O'Brien, and Elmer Kennedy. Front (L-R): Minnie Crawley, Effie Gulliford, Ina Womack and Alta Schumann.

William clearly had a good reputation within Montfort, because his obituary describes him as such:

Since coming to Wisconsin he has resided in Montfort, and is well and favorably known and highly respected by all. His entire life was characterized by honesty and uprightness, and the community suffers the loss of one of its most worthy citizens in the fall of this good man.

He died of acute indigestion during a visit to his daughter’s home on June 13th, 1912 and was buried in the Montfort cemetery just outside of town. After his death, his wife Emily continued to live with her children as can be seen in the census of 1920. She died in Montfort at the age of 79, in 1927. There are many descendants of William and Emily and several are researching their families. Below is a photograph from their first Kennedy reunion.

Family reunion of descendants of William and Emily Kennedy (1955)