George Golding Kennedy papers

George Golding Kennedy was born in Roxbury, Massachusetts, on October 16, 1841, the only son of Scottish and English immigrants Donald and Ann Colgate Kennedy. He was educated at Roxbury Latin School and earned an A.B. from Harvard College in 1864 and an M.D. from Harvard Medical School in 1867. He married Harriet White Harris in 1865. The couple had five children: Edith, Donald (who died in infancy), Harris, Sinclair, and Mildred. After briefly practicing medicine, Kennedy retired to manage his father's medicine manufacturing business, an occupation which provided him with considerable wealth and leisure time to pursue his own scientific and literary studies.

During his time at Harvard, Kennedy studied under botanist Asa Gray. He maintained a lifelong interest in botany and corresponded extensively with both amateur and professional botanists. In 1896, he helped found the New England Botanical Club, remaining an active member and supporter until his death. Together with other botanists, he explored the New England flora on numerous trips around the region, collecting specimens for his personal herbarium and for the Gray Herbarium. He traveled often in North America as well as in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East, taking notes on the flora wherever he went. He published several botanical articles and a flora of Willoughby, Vermont, and from 1896 to 1917 kept a detailed account of his activities and collecting trips in journals.

Kennedy had a strong background in the classics and was a collector of rare books. He created an index to plant references in the works of Francis Bacon and William Shakespeare with notes on the historic uses of each plant. The index appears to have been left uncompleted and was never published.

Throughout his life, Kennedy was very involved in the activities of his 1864 Harvard class. He was a member of many societies and clubs, including the Boston Society of Natural History, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Massachusetts Medical Benevolent Society. He served on the Visiting Committee to the Gray Herbarium for 30 years, contributing to the endowment of the Herbarium and funding the building of a new library wing in 1914. Kennedy and his wife also supported many public and private charities and gave generously to family and friends.

Kennedy built a sizeable herbarium which he eventually divided, donating his collection of mosses to the Farlow Herbarium and a collection of over 1,500 plants from the Willoughby Lake region to the New England Botanical Club herbarium. In November 1917, he gave the remainder of his herbarium, totaling almost 13,500 sheets, to the Gray Herbarium. Kennedy died on March 31, 1918, at his estate in Milton, Massachusetts.

Sources

Robinson BL. 1919. The Gray Herbarium. In Reports of the President and the Treasurer of Harvard College. 1917-1918: 196-201. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Williams EF. 1919. George Golding Kennedy. Rhodora. 21(242):25-35.