K E N N E D Y

An overview of the ancestry of John Kennedy (V), of Melita, Manitoba, Canada, who was born in 1862 at St. Anns, Gainsborough Tp., Lincoln Co., Ontario. He was entirely of American ancestry, all his great-grandparents (except for Charity Wirtz, who died in New Jersey) being Loyalists or “late Loyalists” who came to Canada in the late eighteenth century. Despite his Scottish surname, he was over 3/8 Dutch and German.

Our most recent direct ancestor in the Kennedy line is Jean Margaret Kennedy (1917-2000), wife of Richard Harry Mitchelson, Jr., of Winnipeg, Manitoba. Her father, John Kennedy (V) (1862-1939), the very first of our ancestors to come to Manitoba, was a brother of Mary Jemima Kennedy, wife of Mortimer Sheldon Coon, of Buffalo, N.Y. Their younger daughter, the late Mary Cecelia Coon (1905-1994), wife of Roland Bassett Botting, of Tucson, Arizona, devoted much of the spare time in her long life to genealogical investigations, and with her husband co-authored several booklets, entitled Descendants of John Kennedy of Sussex County, New Jersey (3^rd ed., 1989), The Deans of Gainsboro Township (n.d.), Wilcoxes and McIntyres of Lincoln County (n.d.), as well as their magnum opus, Comfort Families of America (1971). These works — which collectively cover all the ancestry shown in the chart above — and correspondence with Cecelia and Roland before their deaths, have provided the basis from which the present writer’s work on the ancestry of John Kennedy has proceeded. Further detail on the Comfort family is given elsewhere on this site.

Much more material on the Kennedys and allied families will be added to this site as time permits. The first installments are:

• Ancestor Table of Jean Margaret Kennedy.
• The royal descent of Jean Margaret (Kennedy) Mitchelson — part I

See also our treatment of Jean Margaret Kennedy’s mother, Susanna Samantha Helena Young.

Some Sites of Related Interest

• The Kennedy Family of Georgetown, at http://www.hhpl.on.ca/sigs/ehs/kennedy.html
• Wellington County, Ontario, Canada, at http://worldconnect.genealogy.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?db=wellington — this database lists the Erin Township branch of our Kennedys

From the Genealogy Page of John Blythe Dobson
URL = cybrary.uwinnipeg.ca/people/Dobson/genealogy/ff/Kennedy.html
This page written 25 April 1999
Last revised 16 August 2002