My Genealogy Hound

HENRY L. KENDRICK combines modern farming with the important adjunct of dairying, and sets an example worthy of emulation by other agriculturists. He is a son of Oliver and Anna (Gleason) Kendrick, and was born in Heath, Franklin county, Massachusetts, December 31, 1826. His grandfather, John Kendrick, was also a native of Massachusetts, in which State he passed his whole life, dying April 28, 1808, aged sixty-two years. By occupation he was a tiller of the soil, and possessed somewhat the spirit of Mars, being a lieutenant in the State militia, and participating in the war of the Revolution, which resulted in the greatest republic on earth. In religion he was a congregationalist. John Kendrick married Keziah Baldwin, by whom he had nine children, six sons and three daughters. His wife died in 1830, aged seventy-seven years. The maternal grandfather of H. L. Kendrick was Solomon Gleason, who was a native of Massachusetts, where he followed the occupation of a farmer, affiliated with the old line whig party, and believed in the tenets of the Congregational church. Solomon Gleason was married — the union resulting in twelve children. Oliver Kendrick (father) was likewise a native of Massachusetts, being born in 1786, and learned the trade of a mason, at which he worked, meanwhile owning and cultivating a farm. In religion he was a member of the Baptist church, and in politics was an old line whig, being elected to several town offices. Oliver Kendrick married Anna Gleason, by whom he had ten children, five sons and five daughters, six of whom are still living.

Henry L. Kendrick was educated in the common schools of his native county, and began his active life as a farmer near the place of his birth, where he remained until 1853, in which year he came to this county and settled in Sherman, where he has since resided, owning one hundred and fifty acres of land within the corporation of this village, on which he keeps thirty cows and runs a dairy. In religion he is, as is also his wife, a member of the Presbyterian church, in which he has been an elder for twenty years. Politically he is a republican, and is also a member of the Grange.

Henry L. Kendrick was married May 16, 1849, to Frances Bennett, a daughter of Solomon Bennett, a native of Brattleboro, Vermont, born January 6, 1790, a graduate of Middlebury college in that State, who took also a full theological course and became a Congregational minister, occupying pulpits in that denomination for the period of half a century. He was a strong abolitionist, and married Hepzibah N. Jewell, who belonged to an old and distinguished family, Honorable Marshall Jewell, of Hartford, Connecticut, a noted statesman, once governor of Connecticut, postmaster-general and United States minister to Russia under President Grant’s administration, being her relative. Frances Bennett was born in Marlboro, Cheshire county, New Hampshire, in July, 1826, being one of a family of six children, three sons and three daughters, the sons dying young and the daughters still living: the eldest married to Leonard Scott, of Fredonia, this county; Louise, who married Loomis Clark and lives in Sherman; and Mrs. H. L. Kendrick. The father of Mrs. Kendrick died in October, 1882, and her mother, who was born November 16, 1805, died January 22, 1890. The Jewell family are of Scotch ancestry, one of them, John Jewell, being bishop of Salisbury, England, during the reign of Henry de Valois, known as Henry II.