Harper's Encyclopedia of United States History
Benson Lossing, Ed.

---

Kennedy, John Pendleton 1795-1870

Statesman and author; born in Baltimore, Md., Oct. 25, 1795; graduated at the University of Maryland in 1812; admitted to the bar in 1816; elected to the House of Delegates, Maryland, in 1820; to the House of Representatives in 1838; was a member of the twenty-fifth, twenty-seventh, and twenty-eighth Congresses; elected speaker of the Maryland House of Delegates in 1846; appointed Secretary of the Navy under President Fillmore in 1852. Among his works are a Review of Mr. Cambreling's free-trade report; A Memorial on domestic industry; A report on the commerce and navigation of the United States, by the committee of commerce, of which Mr. Kennedy was chairman; and also a Report on the warehouse system by the same committee; Life of William Wirt; Discourses on the life of William Wirt, and George Calvert, the first Lord Baltimore. Mr. Kennedy as an author is, however, best known by his novels, Swallow barn; A sojourn in the old Dominion; Horse-shoe Robinson: a tale of the Tory ascendency; Rob of the bowl, a legend of St. Inigoes, a story of colonial Maryland life. He died in Newport, R. I., Aug. 28, 1870.