California Biographies, San Joaquin Valley

Transcribed by Peggy Hooper

This file is part of the California Genealogy & History Archives
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cagha/index.htm

Source:
History of the state of California and biographical record of the San Joaquin 
Valley, California. An historical story of the state's marvelous growth from 
its earliest settlement to the present time.
Prof. James Miller Guinn , A. M.
The Chapman Publishing Co., Chicago 1905
Notes: Missing Page: 865-866,983-984,1175-1176


 ROBERT KENNEDY. One of the best known stockmen in Tulare and Fresno counties is Robert Kennedy, 
who is as well an extensive farmer, the Kennedy-Clark ranch being one of the finest stock ranches in 
this section. Mr. Kennedy is a native of Liverpool. England, where he was born March 23, 1839. His 
father, William Kennedy, was a merchant in that city. Robert Kennedy received his education in the 
common schools, after which he was apprenticed to learn the carpenter's trade. In July, 1862, he took 
passage aboard the sailing vessel, Utopia, and sailed from Plymouth to Brisbane, Australia, around the 
Cape of Good Hope, arriving early in November of the same year. In Brisbane he engaged in 
contracting and building until November, 1866, when he took passage on the sailing vessel Nimrod, to 
San Francisco, making a brief call at the Sandwich Islands and arriving in San Francisco in March, 1867. 
He followed contracting and building in that city for three years, when he came to the San Joaquin 
valley, which was then merely a stock country. He began the sheep business, locating first on the San 
Joaquin river below Millerton, and in 1872 settled on the plains twenty miles northwest of Visalia, 
where he bought a section of school land and later entered a homestead. He continued to add to his 
land during the years in which he followed this business until to-day the ranch known as the Kennedy-
Clark contains thirty-six hundred acres in one body, which is well fenced, under irrigation and planted 
largely to alfalfa. He also has a mountain ranch of two thousand acres located on Sand creek, and since 
1885 has devoted his attention to general stockraising, although he is very much interested in sheep, 
having seven thousand head of fine grade. He raises Shorthorn and Durham cattle and is accounted 
one of the most successful stockmen in the San Joaquin valley. In 1892 he located in Fresno, where he 
now owns a handsome residence at No. 2907 Mariposa street, considered one of the finest in the city, 
while he also owns various other residences throughout the city and county. He is a valued citizen in 
public affairs in Fresno, being a director, stockholder and vice-president in the Bank of Central 
California. 

In San Francisco Mr. Kennedy was united in marriage with Marian Ryce, a native of Scotland, and they 
are the parents of the following children : May, who became the wife of A. W. Clark, and is now 
deceased ; Margaret, the wife of E. A. Cutter, of Berkeley ; Jessie, the wife of Fred D. Prescott, of 
Fresno ; Elizabeth ; Ethel ; and Helen, the last three named being at home' with their parents. In his 
political convictions Mr. Kennedy is a stanch adherent of the principles advocated in the platform of 
the Republican party.