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Family tree▼ Facts and Events
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References
- ↑ The marriage of Mr. Kennedy with his present wife, formerly Miss Elizabeth Wright, took place Oct. 15, 1857, in Stockton Township, Jo Daviess County. She was born in Munson, Geauga Co., Ohio, March 7, 1834, and is the daughter of Ransom and Elizabeth (Thompson) Wright, natives of New York, whence they removed to Ohio after their marriage, being among the pioneer settlers of Geauga County. Mr. Wright cleared a farm from the wilderness, but only lived to establish a comfortable home for his family, his death taking place in 1839, when he was but thirty-seven years of age. Mrs. Wright came to Illinois in 1853, and took up her abode in Jo Daviess County, where her death occurred in 1868. George N. and Elizabeth Kennedy became the parents of six children, of whom the record is as follows: Emily E. is the wife of Truman Wheeler and lives in Geneva, Fillmore Co., Neb.; Willie Elmer died when three years of age; George W. lives in Fillmore County, Neb.; Luella F., Arthur E. and William Stewart are at home with their parents. Mrs. Kennedy is a worthy member of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Mr. K. affiliates with the Republican party and has served as Highway Commissioner and School Director twenty-one years. He was Pathmaster and Commissioner of the township for over thirty years. In 1847 he commenced breaking prairie and followed this for about six years, working frequently with from four to seven yoke of oxen at one time. He was always wide-awake and ambitious, and in addition to his other employments frequently took the contract for building sod fences, utilizing for this purpose the surface of the ground, filled with prairie grass roots, which he laboriously turned up from the soil with his long string of oxen. Although the pioneers perhaps were not skilled in book learning, they resorted to many ingenious devices to overcome the forests and prepare the soil for cultivation, of which the people of this later day know but little. Nothing was allowed to be wasted and one of the great secrets of their success was the rigid economy practiced at every turn, and which later scientists have declared to be the prime principle of Nature herself as exhibited in the unfolding blade of grass and especially in the soil which gives it sustenance.
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