Merchant ship captain John F. Kennedy fonds, 1796-1862

Abstract

The fonds consists mainly of letters from merchant ship captain John F. Kennedy to his wife Marcia Gray, written from 1796 to 1818. Some letters describe the confiscation of his ships, a common occurrence at the time due to the Napoleonic wars, the War of 1812, and the Barbary Wars. One letter is from Kennedy to James Mosher, a banker in Baltimore, dated December 28, 1808. Other print documents include two pages of financial accounts (1833-1835); a one page family register recording births, marriages and deaths; and a manuscript fragment of a poem. The collection also includes 3 photographs. One is a photograph of an unidentified woman (possibly Marcia Gray Kennedy); a photograph of Lucy Hansel MacGrotty Phipps, dated October 8, 1862; and a photograph of a building in Pittsfield, New Hampshire, by American photographer Frank B. Berry (ca. 1890s).