The Kennedys of Campsie and Glossop

The Kennedys of Campsie and Glossop updated 9th September 2007

Read my somewhat out of date article Who are the Kennedys? A major update on this will be produced sometime autumn 2007.

Sometime in the 1840s two shoemakers and their families made their way to Campsie. One, John Kennedy , had come from the Gartmore estate village with his two sons John and James and daughters Catherine and Mary. The other, William Hamilton, had come from Belfast. For a while they lived in the same tenement house in Main Street Lennoxtown. There were several other Kennedy families, almost all of whom were Irish (see my separate study of all the others) James had five daughters and took his whole family to New Zealand in 1864. Catherine married Robert Coubrough of Campsie and moved to Busby where she had ten children. She died in Bonhill in 1905. Mary was last seen as a 26 year old spinster in the 1861 Campsie census living with her father. John Kennedy ('Junior') married Margaret Clarke of Whitefields in 1854 and they had nine children, two of whom sadly never survived to adulthood. The seven remaining children can be seen listed in the 1881 census; they were John, James, Alexander, William, David, Catherine and Margaret. Back then the entire family worked at the local calico printworks around which the Newtown of Campsie or Lennoxtown had grown. The eldest two sons married in the town in the 1880s and spent their working lives there. But the other five children had all left by the turn of the century. Without any clues and with their common surname they are difficult to trace and I have named them 'the Missing Kennedys'. Kennedy name distribution, 1881

Kennedy name distribution in 1881. Top 2 counties in absolute numbers were Lancashire and Lanarkshire; per 100, 000 of the population they were Argyllshire and Inverness. One in three Kennedys lived in either Lancashire or Lanarkshire. Those in Lancashire are a mixture of Irish and Scottish Kennedys although this mix occurred in Scotland too - in fact there were a number of Irish born Kennedys living in Campsie at the same time as our family. I first tracked down William in the England census for 1901 where he was still doing the family trade of calico printing in Charlesworth near Glossop in the Peak District. He married a local girl from Manchester, Sarah Consterdine, who died in childbirth and the census shows his sister Catherine living there too, presumably helping out with the raising of the daughter Ada. William remarried (Nancy Clarke) but succumbed to TB aged only 40. Ada sadly never made it to adulthood. In attendance at her death was her aunt Margaret who by 1918 was running a confectionery shop in Glossop High Street. There were no children from the second marriage. Nancy and Margaret Kennedy are both buried together with William and Ada in Charlesworth graveyard. There was one descendant from this branch, a son Eric born to Margaret whose family are still living in north west England. James Kennedy had three children. One of them, Margaret, became a school teacher at the Clachan of Campsie Infant school in 1914. The other two, Jane and John, moved to Airdrie and spent out their days there. Jane married a Finlayson. John married an Irene Ratcliffe and had a son. I am still on the trail of these people; Alexander Kennedy b. 1864, David Kennedy b. 1868 and Mary Kennedy b 1830. [Update 30.7.2006 - I have now located David as an adult, he spent his life working at a foundry in Falkirk and in 1907 married an Isabella Miller from Giffnock. They both died in Falkirk in 1948 and appear to have had no children. ] [Update 9.9.2007 - I have now located Mary b. 1830, she married Robert McEwan in Anderston in 1867. They had 3 known children, one of whom later moved to the States. It's not yet known whether Mary went there, certainly she is not apparent in the later Scottish census returns under the McEwan name.] The Lennox Mill printworks closed down in January 1929. Some years later the site was redeveloped as the Kali Nail Factory but this too has now closed and the site levelled. The area is still called Whitefields, the name it was given when the industry first started up after the white colour of the bleaching fields. You can still see the dam built to supply the works, sometimes referred to as Whitefields Pond, at the west end of town. One of the town's main claims to fame now rests in the springs on the Campsie Fells above which supply bottled springwater to one of the supermarkets where it is marketed as 'Caledonian Still'.

Here is how the Kirkintilloch Herald described the last few weeks at Lennox Mill:

January 9th 1929. "Work was resumed on Monday by those retained to finish off in Lennox Mill. Dame Rumour is abroad in the district, regarding the taking over of the works, but there is nothing definite to go upon."

January 16th 1929. "Only one department, the finishers, is employed in Lennox Mill this week and it is expected the department will be cleared tonight. This is the last of the production departments to cease. A large number of tradesmen and general workers, firemen and labourers finished last Friday evening. Over 300 signed on at the Labour Exchange now established in Lennoxtown on Monday."

January 23rd 1929. Lennox Mill Employees Compensation. 'Compensation will be paid on Friday 18th 2-4 o'clock ... it will apply to all employees having 10 years or more service.' The displaced employees lined up at the counting house on Friday afternoon and received between 10/- and #1.

February 6th 1929. The newspaper reports that now both Lennoxtown Friendly Societies have been wound up due to the unemployment of their members.

February 13th 1929. A letter from the Calico Printers Association to Lennox Mill is published. "As you are aware, this necessity has arisen owing to the fact that in order to meet foreign competition and regain some of Lancashire's lost trade it is necessary to reduce costs which can only be done by concentrating the available business in the best equipped works."

Have you heard about the Kennedy Surname DNA project? This is a world-wide project to bring together Kennedys of whatever origin by testing male Y-chromsone DNA and comparing profiles. This can be used to prove or disprove relationships and even provide some idea of how recently two Kennedys had a common ancestor. I have a project page on the project here or you can go direct to the official project page and sign up or ask questions.

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