My friends Robin and Geraldine have a racehorse by the stallion American Ideal. They named it -- I'm not sure whether cynically or sincerely -- 'Kennedy'. Well, 'Kennedy' has been a bit of a problem horse: he's shown flashes of promise, but, on the whole, has generated more despair than rejoicing. Yesterday, he ran at our local track. He went out at 20-1 (I think he might have been 100-1, except NZ's top driver was in the sulky!) and wow! He flashed his brightest yet, finishing a very solid 4th.
The verso is inscribed Aunt Maria Hardy Kennedy. Well, the inscriber ... whom I have since set out to identify ... wasn't quite right. She was Anna Maria Hardy Kennedy, and I think may have been the inscriber's great-aunt. Anyway, I instantly checked the vendor's stock and ... whee! ... eight more Kennedys ... this could be fun. So I dug. And having dug, and discovered, I checked the web and found that others had dug in the same patch before. But, although Susanna Long and others had some family photos on the trees ... not these ones. Either the family photos were split up some time ago, ot there was more than one photo album in the Kennedy (etc) family.
So, what did I find, and where did pretty Anna Maria fit in.
Mr Lewis Kennedy, surveyor and land agent of St James's Street, and his wife Harriet Sewell née Mitton (I haven't gone back any further) were married 9 April 1817 and over the next decade produced four sons and two daughters, to wit:
Lewis Drummond Kennedy b St James's Street, 20 September 1818; d 6 Alexander Square 29 January 1885
John Eugene Kennedy b St James's St, 16 December 1819; d 6 Alexander Square 27 July 1901
George Penrose Kennedy b St James's St, 9 November 1821; d Sunnyside, Lewisham 19 April 1894
Anna Maria Hardy Kennedy b Hans Place, Chelsea 9 December 1823; d 38 Norland Square 9 February 1913
Harriet Mitton Kennedy b Easthampstead 1826; d 76 Sutherland Gardens, Maids Vale 3 May 1885
Archibald Kennedy b Hans Place, Chelsea 29 July 1828; d Chelsea October 1851
Well, we've got Anna Maria. And here is Harriet ...
The Kennedys were an important family of landscape gardeners. Kennedy's great-grandfather Lewis Kennedy (1721-82) had set up the Vineyard Nurseries in Hammersmith c.1745. His son John Kennedy, the architect's grandfather, continued the business there. Of his twelve children, Lewis, the sixth child and the architect's father, was sent to Riga to make contacts for the business in 1804, and was in Paris supplying plants to the Empress Josephine in 1812 when he was taken prisoner. On 24 April 1817 he married Harriet Sewell Mitton, their address being 56 St James's Street, Kensington, by which date he had a career as a landscape gardener separately from the family nursery, notably at Dunkeld (1813) where he designed conservatories for the Duke of Atholl, and at Stow, Norfolk (1812), Oddington (1813), Chiswick House (1814), Trent Park (1815) and Buckhurst Park (1819). During the course of this work Peter Burrell, after 1828 Drummond Burrell, who had married the only surviving child of Lord Perth, invited Lewis to take over the management of the Drummond estates, initially from 5 Alexander Square, Brompton but with a Scottish base at Pitkellony House, Muthill, in or before 1822. There the Kennedys brought up six children, the sons being Lewis Drummond (1818-88) who became a Rector in the Lincolnshire estates, John Eugene (1819-1901), who succeeded his father as factor at Drummond Castle in 1868, George Penrose, and Archibald (1828-51) a civil engineer who died young.
Lewis Kennedy appears to have secured for his son George a place in the office of Sir Charles Barry then engaged in proposals for remodelling Drummond Castle as a neo-Norman pile. From the albums sold by Sotheby's in 1890 (to Weinreb from whom acquired by the Canadian Centre for Architecture) it appears that in addition to other major Barry projects, he was involved in the re-creation of the formal gardens at Drumlanrig in 1840; he probably began the restoration of those at Drummond Castle when still in Barry's employ and made the designs for the banqueting tent erected there for Queen Victoria's visit on 2 September 1842. Thereafter he assisted Francis Cranmer Penrose with his archaeological investigations in Athens, being there in March 1845, and by 1849 he was in practice on his own account at Sussex Chambers, St James's.
Sometime before 1855 Kennedy established an office at 119 Hope Street, Glasgow, perhaps initially only as a branch office, but by 1868 the Glasgow office, now at 160 Hope Street, had become his sole address with Robert Dalglish as partner there from at least 1861; his practice had not, however, been exclusively Scottish as the 'Architect's Engineer's and Building Trades' Directory' of that year refers to at least one residence in Liverpool and 'numerous churches, schools, factories, mills, hotels, &c in Scotland and Wales'. This same directory also lists unspecified 'country seats, residences and villas' at Paisley, Johnstone, Cambuslang, Govan, Coatbridge, Glasgow, Kintyre, Loch Katrine, Largs, Arrochar, Ayr, Dumbarton, Rutherglen, Kincardine and Crieff.
The Drummond Estate connection was lost when Kennedy's brother John was dismissed in 1877 and his family was required to leave Pitkillony. By that date Kennedy does not appear to have been a very active partner. It was perhaps a combination of the dismissal from the Drummond Estate and the sharp decline in business after the failure of the City of Glasgow Bank in the following year that led to the partnership with Dalglish being dissolved c.1879. Kennedy remained at 40 Union Street for a time but subsequently retired to Sunnyside, Lewisham, Kent, and died in 1898.
What more can I say? George had a bundle of children by his two wives. Our group of pictures includes one of them [Harriet Louisa] Florence Kennedy (b Monkland, Scotland 22 April 1865) who can be seen with her sister Dorothea Steele Kennedy (b 1862), living/staying with uncle John in Alexander Square in 1901.
Adm. at CLARE, Feb. 17, 1875. Matric. Lent, 1876; B.A. 1880; M.A. 1883. Ord. deacon (Chester) 1880; priest, 1881; Curate. of Frodsham, Cheshire, 1880-1. C. of Castle Rising, Norfolk, 1881-2. C. of St Mark's, Camberwell, Surrey, 1882-3. V. of Pelynt, Cornwall, 1883-91. V. of Pensnett, Staffs., 1891-8. R. of Peckleton, Leics., 1898-1919. V. of Foxton, Cambs., 1919-28. Subsequently resided at Worthing, where he died Jan. 13, 1932, aged 75. Buried at Brompton. (Crockford; The Times, Jan. 16, 1932.)
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