John Brand Kenneday and Margaret Campbell

Angus and Katharine’s son John Brand Kenneday was born in Tulliallan on 29 August 1787 and married Margaret Campbell in St Cuthberts Church, Edinburgh on 26 December 1808. John is described as a cabinetmaker of Nicolson Street and Margaret as the daughter of Lieutenant James Campbell deceased, formerly of the 6^th West India Regiment. It seems Margaret was born on 21 May 1786 in Comrie and her parents James Campbell and Margaret McEwen had married there on 30 December 1783.

Nicolson Street was built about 1780 on the edge of the Old Town as a mixture of commercial and residential properties. As John was just 21 it is likely he was lodging with an employer.

It would be interesting to know more about James Campbell. The 6^th West India Regiment mainly served in the Caribbean, defending slave plantations in places like St Lucia, St Kitts and Guadeloupe against the French forces of Napoleon. Conditions were absolutely dreadful with such a high death rate from disease that the British Government bought black slaves and turned them into troops. Mercenaries from places like Prussia refused to go the West Indies and it was pretty easy to get a commission as an officer. If James had come from a military family his father could have been serving in the army at the time of the second Jacobite rebellion.

John and Margaret Kennedy’s oldest son Angus was born in November 1809 and christened at St Cuthberts Church on 1 December. I have not yet found his birth details.

The family soon moved back to Tulliallan on the North side of the Forth. John must have done reasonably well for himself, because when votes were given out after the Great Reform Act he appears on the first voters roll for Kincardine published in 1832. The 1841 Census shows him living at 1 Elphinstone Street, Kincardine, with his wife Margaret, daughter Catherine aged 15, John aged 14 and Robert aged 11. John Senior and Margaret both gave their ages as 50, which was wrong, as John was 54 and Margaret 55.

By the 1851 Census the family are living at 43 Holmhead Street, Glasgow. This was just North of Cathedral Street and is now part of the site of Buchanan Galleries. In 1851 it was probably a reasonably upmarket city centre address. Apart from John and Margaret there were in the house Mary (34, dressmaker) Helen (30, milliner) Euphemia (28, straw hat maker) James (26, sailor first mate) and Robert (20, book-keeper to a procurator). There was also a daughter Margaret, so John and Margaret had at least nine children, Robert the youngest being born when Margaret was 46.

It is interesting that these female Kennedys made hats, as did subsequent generations.

Robert got married to Ann Fulton Smith in 1858, but died the next year from tuberculosis and is described then as a merchant in Aleppo (Syria).

John died on 15 March 1856 aged 68 after several years of paralysis and is buried in the Glasgow Necropolis (plot theta65). Margaret Campbell or Kennedy died on 17 January 1863 aged 76 of “constipation” (in fact this was probably cancer) and long term paralysis. She lived at that time at 51 Apsley Place, Glasgow.