[Read at the funeral service, July 1st, 1879, by the pastor, Arthur E. Main.]
Doctor Joseph D. Kenyon was born in Sterling, Conn., Sept. 16th, 1792, and died in Hopkinton, R. I., June 29th, 1879, in the 87th year of his age. Two younger brothers, but of too feeble health to be here today, are still living at the old homestead, where our deceased friend longed to go once more, that he might look on the scenes of earlier years, and visit the graves of his beloved dead.
Thirsting for knowledge, he left home at the age of eighteen to seek an education, and at about the age of twenty-five, having taught at times, meanwhile, to replenish an exhausted purse, he graduated from Dartmouth College, and commenced the study of medicine in South Kingstown, R. I. In that town, in Westerly, and in Carlton, Mass., were spent the first few years of his remarkably long career as a physician.
In 1824, Dr. Kenyon married Miss Frances W. Noyes, who died in 1828, leaving two children, one of whom died in infancy. In 1829, he married Miss Lydia R. Noyes, who with five children, are left to mourn the loss of a loving and beloved husband and father.
In 1841, at the age of forty-nine, the husband, with his fife and oldest daughter, professed Christ by baptism, and united with the First Seventh-day Baptist Church of Hopkinton, which ancient church of God was our brother’s spiritual home at the time of his death.
Dr. Kenyon was “a true gentleman, a gentleman of that old school of manners now fast passing away.” For several years he was a teacher in the public schools of South Kingstown, and for a long time a leader in the educational interests of this town, superintending the schools and examining the teachers. He also served his fellow citizens in the State legislature, and was a member of the Old State Board of Medical Examiners, at whose hands candidates for the medical profession sought their certificates.
For sixty years or more he performed with great success and over a broad range of country the duties of his noble calling; and occupied a prominent place as a counseling physician. He was a welcome visitor in a multitude of homes, where the people trusted him for his skill, and where his genial nature brought sunshine into rooms of sickness and suffering. And while ministering to the bodies of those entrusted to his care, it is said that he sought to bring the spiritual ministries of our holy religion into the souls of the sick and dying.
The body, tired of suffering which was endured with prayer and patience, and at the last with prayer for release, now lies at rest, and the indwelling spirit has gone to the land of the spirits and of immortality; and to me it seems a most fitting thing that from this house, so long the home of our departed friend, rather than from any other, and by the loving hands of sons, grandson, and nephew, rather than by other, these remains should be carried to the grave, their final resting place.
