James Kennedy

  Research Notes:

Carolyn Darby notes:
What I learned through your contact with Robyn is very interesting: that my father's (Keith PATrick Symes) mother's father had a brother Hugh who emigrated to North America somewhere (I'm not sure if I was told where). My grandmother (Mary Margaret Symes, nee Kennedy, daughter of James who immigrated to Australia with his sister Margaret, who married John Plant Wright) on Ida in 1864, arriving January) died at age 60 in December 1930, so as I was born in January 1940 I did not know her. When I first started tracing family in 2006 I discovered from the shipping logs that James, an "iron turner" (later described as an engineer) and his older sister Margaret, a milliner, already had a sister Agnes living in Sydney but I still can't decipher the writing of her last name (I guess she was married); it could be Alvin, Alcorn, Cilour. I don't suppose you have a clue? The log entry gave her address as cnr of Stanley and what looked like Brown St, but was probably Crown St. I have looked in the Sands' directory around 1864 but couldn't find any likely names.
I learned a lot more about the Wright family, but very little about Margaret herself, a few years ago from the records held by the 90-year-old Gdaughter, who has since died, of the eldest son of James and Ann, nee Lamont/d (native of Tiree, Scotland). I have since been told by the Gson of Agnes Pratten, eldest daughter of Margaret and John Plant Wright, that John Plant was also on the Ida. The story is that he was in the leather business and travelled out with a few others in the same trade. They all started separate shoe manufacturing businesses. Seems amazing that they each had customers enough in a Sydney population of 56,000! But they must have done well to live in a big house in a then fashionable suburb, Ashfield, then built a big one in a prominent position overlooking Manly beach above the surf club (my father said that Margaret used to ring a bell if she saw a shark from the verandah. They only lived there for about seven years because they died within two months of one another (Margaret first) in 1912. But JPW had found time to build a house for each of his daughters and also his namesake John Plant, the youngest of nine (I think without checking my records) children close by in Manly. Agnes, who married Herbert Pratten, a soon to become politician, lived in the Ashfield house. There is a Barnett Family (haven't tried to find out where they fit) Tree on Ancestry that says of Margaret: "Stayed in her room a lot. Wardrobe drinker." After all those kids, I don't wonder! but she must have gone out on the verandah to look for sharks, because that is all Dad remembered about her-he would have been only nine when she died. I know a lot more about the Wright/Pratten family, met offspring who aren't all that interested in knowing we are related-think there must have been a family split between the step brothers or their families, though it was Herbert who came to Australia first and Frederick followed and joined Herbert in his original venture-a cordial cum jam business. They were also into tin in New Guinea and then printing was developed mainly by Fred I think while Herbert went into Federal parliament. He died at 63 in 1928 speaking to a group of women constituents at the Masonic Hall, Turramurra, the suburb next to where I grew up and two away from where I live now. I think you might know all that because I just saw an unidentified-author entry on the Internet that looks like what I wrote to Robyn.

  Noted events in his life were:

• connection. Carolyn Darby 's connection to Robert is as follows:

Carolyn Symes (1940) married ? Darby
Her father was Keith Symes (1903)
His father was Robert Symes (c1870) who married Mary Kennedy (1872)
Her father was James Kennedy (1844)
His father was Alexander Kennedy (c1810) & he also had Margaret Kennedy (c1842) who married John Plant Wright (c1850)
They had Ethel Wright (1883) who married Reginald Passau (1879)
His father was Frederick Passau (1842)
His father was Samuel Passau who married Matilda Dawes (1818)
Her father was Aaron Daw (1779) & he also had Edward Dawes (1813)
He had James Dawes (1843)
He had Annie Florence Dawes (1873) who married Arthur Augustus Bray (1869)
They had Albert Alan Bray (1896)
He had Robert Alfred Bray (192)
He had Robert Arthur Bray (1947) who married me - Robyn Bray (nee Davies) (1950)

James married Ann Lamont in 1866 in Sydney, NSW Australia.²¹² (Ann Lamont was born in 1845, died on 12 Jun 1927 in Eastwood, Sydney, NSW Australia and was buried in Rookwood Cemetery, Lidcombe, Sydney, NSW Australia ²¹².)