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| Meadville's Diamond Park as it may have looked in the early 1800s |
… My dear Elizabeth since I saw you, I have seen many strange sights
and no doubt some difficulties but when they are past, they all appear as
nothing. I am at present living in the town of Meadville; I like this place
very well, it is something like the old country much more hilly and very well-watered;
there are very few Scotch people here for they are mostly Dutch and Irish, but
there are all kinds.
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| Agnes's Daughter Margaret Kennedy |
I have seen but one funeral since I have been here. The custom is
very far from what it is in the old country: they don’t put on mourning here
and women all go to the funeral here.
It is now almost a month since the first snow came, and it is now
nothing but sleigh bells ringing all the time. I was out a sleigh riding
yesterday sixteen miles, it is very pleasant it goes so smoothly you can
scarcely feel yourself moving at all, they are very plentiful.
I felt it rather difficult to become acquainted with their way of cooking at first, it is
quite different, the houses here are not built with fireplaces; they cook all
with stoves which keeps the house much warmer, they burn wood mostly in them
and it is a great deal easier to work with than a fire; when you take a house
here you have to provide your own stove.
There is no such thing as oatmeal, here it is all flour. Flour is
very cheap. I had a letter from my brother James and I have been just writing
to him, so I think it is needless to tell you anything about the prices of
things here as I have just stated them to him. You would be astonished to see
how quick I have learned to bake bread, I think I can beat any of the Cumnock
bakers. We can bake, boil 4 or 5 kinds of dishes at a time, the stove is very
handy I assure you.
The letter continues with a reference to a proposed trip to Canada.
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| John Kennedy |
I have never been alone but one week when John was away at Pittsburgh, but doubt I will feel it worse this time as they will be gone three weeks or a month; and now my dear Elizabeth, I never enjoyed better health in my life, which I have every reason to be thankful, and happier I could not wish to be, far more than I ever anticipated. …
The letter ends:
Be sure and write me a long letter as there is nothing in this world
gives me more pleasure than to hear from home, write soon. Excuse this scroll.
I remain, my Dear Elizabeth,
Your ever-affectionate sister
Agnes Kennedy
They went to
Toronto in the new year and their daughter Margaret was born there in March
1843.[5] Two
years later Agnes bore a son. John recorded in his bible that in February 1845
‘my beloved wife and little son died in Toronto North America and were buried
in the Potters Field there’. Agnes was only 20 when she died; John and his
daughter returned to Britain, living in Liverpool by 1848.[6]
The original of this letter is lost but the text comes from a
transcription made for me by an aunt who possessed the letter up to her death
in 1988. I wanted to share Agnes’ vibrant description of living in Meadville in
1842 with historians of Crawford County and would be interested to hear how
they rate this information.
* * *
Author Biography
Sue Hirst, M Phil, FSA, is a British
Archaeologist, currently joint Managing Editor at Museum of London Archaeology
(MOLA), responsible for editing MOLA monographs and popular books. Prior to
this role, Sue directed archaeological excavations in the UK and worked on
writing and editing archaeological publications. She is the co-author of
monographs on Cistercian Bordesley Abbey and a number of early medieval
cemetery excavations, including most recently the Anglo-Saxon princely burial
at Prittlewell, Southend-on-Sea.
Family history provides a useful foil to
her work as an archaeologist – the insights of archaeology produce fascinating
information on social history and demography from earlier times, but it remains
impersonal. Knowledge of the individual is for those who work on more recent and/or
better-documented times. By studying her family history, she hoped to breathe
life into the biographies of the shadowy individuals in the family archive, and
to understand them in terms of a democratized version of recent history –
ordinary people living their lives in different times and places.
Sources
[2] The
elopement was attested by family tradition; the marriage recorded in John
Kennedy’s bible (extant).
[3] New York Passenger Lists, 1820-1957; New York,
Passenger and Immigration Lists, 1820-1850; consulted at www.Ancestry.co.uk. John is listed as
‘merchant’.
[4] John Parker’s presence on the same ship is
confirmed by the Passenger list (note 3); it is recorded that he established a
business in Toronto and was for a time in partnership there with John Kennedy (Past
years in Pickering: sketches of the history of the community, by W R Wood,
Toronto, 1911, p 57; available online at http:// http://contentdm.ucalgary.ca/digital/collection/p22007coll8/id/326024)
[6] Recorded
in John Kennedy’s bible and confirmed in 1851 census as living in Liverpool and
working as a draper.
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