The Kennedy Family of Lauderdale County, Alabama

   This is actually much more than the title. It was my sister who started me on this journey, Margaret Louise Leland Duvic. Actually she is in fact my half-sister, we share the same father, but had different mothers. Her mother was Mabel Cornelia Kennedy. During a visit she gave me the information she had acquired on the Kennedy family and I took it home to enter in my database. The information she gave me was basically a chapter from the book "My Southern Family" by Hiram Kennedy Douglass, 1967, World Nobility and Peerage, The Blackmore Press, Gillingham, Dorset, and a manuscript compiled by Sue Shaw abt 1979. I mistakenly assumed after entering about 200 names from Mr. Douglas's book that the manuscript would be basically some anecdotal information, how wrong I was, Sue had expanded greatly on Mr. Douglas's research and I ended up with over 600 names.
    That was O.K. until I generated my webpages in my genealogy program. I knew that there was some crossover to the Leland family from the Kennedy's, my great-grandmother Ella McLester's sister Joanne married a Kennedy, and my sister thought that our father was distantly related to her mother, well the crossover occurred much earlier than that, instead of the late 1800's it occurred in the middle 1700's. I generated over 1200 names linked to Duncan de Carrick, the progenator of the Kennedy line according to Hiram Kennedy Douglas.
    Browse for a while, leave and then return, there are literally thousands of avenues through this line that you may pursue. Keep in mind that some of this is pure conjecture, some is slight conjecture and some may even be fact. If you need to use this information to begin your journey, you should verify it on your own. Here for the first time is the reported link of the Leland family to Robert E. Lee, it is based on legend and very circumstantial evidence, however it is my goal to validate this link by the end of the millenium! On the next page will be the introduction quoted from "My Southern Family" by Hiram Kennedy Douglass, following that the The Descendants of Duncan de Carrick begins.The Crest of the Kennedy family is found as the background for the Table of Contents and other reference pages. The Coat of Arms is that of ONE living individual, and I for one do not know who that is, it is not, according to law, available for use by anyone named Kennedy. The Crest however may be worn proudly by any Clan member. There is a definate problem obtaining the coat of arms, it seems for something illegal to use, everyone wants to sell it, go figure! There is a link now to Culzean Castle on the next page, be sure to visit it, it is well worth while. I will link other areas this way as well whenever I discover something of historical value. Hopefully by the end of the year we will have pictures of the Kennedy "castles" in Scotland, as my sister and some of her daughters are planning a trip there this year.

Richard McLester Leland 3rd ©2000
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