Murphy Kennedy Reunion

John Kennedy, born in Ireland in 1800, married Cecily Prendergass on Nov 20, 1830 in Canada, and they had eight children. Their oldest daughter, Margaret married John Murphy on February 15, 1852 in Richmond, Quebec, Canada. John had migrated from Ireland in 1837 with his parents. In 1865 with seven small children, John and Margaret moved to Mooresville, Missouri. Five more children were born to them in Missouri.

John and Cecily Kennedy left Quebec sometime in 1878 for the United States when their shoemaker shop and home burned. By then all of their children had left Quebec for the United States. John and Cecily came to Missouri where most of their children lived.

Their second son, John Patrick Kennedy (born March 17, 1838) married Alice (Allen) Kelly (born 11/1/1846) in 1878. Alice was a widow with four little daughters by her first husband (Thomas Kelly). The four little Kelly children were Margaret, Anna, Mary and Alice. John Patrick Kennedy took these four little girls as his own. John Patrick and Alice had seven more children: Katherine I. Kennedy, John S. Kennedy, Michael Henry Kennedy, Thomas Kennedy, William Edward Kennedy, Joseph Kennedy and Leo Victor Kennedy. They later moved to Broken Bow, Nebraska and then to Montana.

All of us Murphys are related to the Kennedy children through John Patrick, and some of us are double related to the Kennedys through Alice. William Murphy, fifth child of John and Margaret (Kennedy) Murphy and our grandfather, married John Patrick's stepdaughter, Anna Teresa Kelly in Broken Bow, Nebraska on October 24, 1888. They eventually settled in Mooresville, MO. From this union twelve children were born, and we are their descendants.