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SAMUEL G. KENNEDY, M. D.
Vol. 3, p. 985-86

A pioneer physician and surgeon who is held in the highest esteem in
the City of Tulsa is Dr. Samuel Grant Kennedy, who here engaged in
practice in 1891, in company with his older brother, Dr. James L.
Kennedy, concerning whom individual mention is made on other pages of
this volume. With all of zeal and self-abnegation Doctor Kennedy
labored in the alleviation of human suffering in the early days when
his work compelled him to traverse long distances and be oblivious to
fatigue, adverse climatic conditions, ill defined trails and roads
and general physical discomfort, and he and his brother long
controlled a practice that extended over a wide radius of country
from Tulsa as its center. Both assisted in the development of the
frontier village into a thriving city of metropolitan facilities, and
few of the pioneer citizens of this part of the state are better
known, while none is held in higher popular regard than he whose name
initiates this article. The doctor has kept in touch with the march
of progress in Oklahoma, has made judicious investments in real
estate and has achieved financial independence, so that he has felt
justified in retiring from the arduous work of his profession, after
years of earnest and efficient service.
Doctor Kennedy was born on the parental homestead farm near
Stockton, Cedar County, Missouri, and the date of his nativity was
June 9, 1865. He is a son of Allen B. and Matilda E. (GILMORE)
Kennedy, the former a native of Tennessee and the latter of Kentucky.
The parents passed the closing years of their long and useful lives
in Oklahoma, where the father died in 1910, at the venerable age of
eighty-four years, and where the mother died in March, 1913, at the
age of seventy-one years. Of their large family of children the
subject of this review was the fourth in order of birth. Allen B.
Kennedy was a lad of six years when he accompanied his parents on
their removal to Missouri, in 1830, and his father died soon after
their arrival at their destination. In 1833 the widowed mother and
her children made settlement in Cedar County, near Sauk River, and
under the conditions and influences of the pioneer epoch in the
history of Missouri Allen B. Kennedy was reared to manhood. His alert
mentality, self-reliance, industry and ambition enabled him to
achieve definite success in his activities as a farmer and stock-
grower and he was long numbered among the honored and influential
citizens of the county in which he maintained his home for many years
and in which he served in various public offices, including that of
county assessor. He was originally an old-line whig but was an early
supporter of the cause of the republican party, to which he
thereafter paid uncompromising allegiance till the time of his death.
He was a strong Union man during the climacteric period of the Civil
war, and this fact is indicated by his having given to two of his
sons their second personal names in honor President Lincoln and
General Grant.

To the public schools of Cedar County, Missouri, Doctor Kennedy is
indebted for his early educational discipline, which included a
course in the high school at Stockton, the judicial cent of the
county. Thereafter he pursued higher academic studies in the
Southwest Baptist College, at Bolivar that state, and he then resumed
his association with the work and management of the home farm. Two
years later, however, in 1886, he entered Ozark College, at
Springfield, Missouri, and in addition to continuing his studies in
this excellent institution he became also a successful teacher in the
schools of his native state, his services in the pedagogic profession
having been given at intervals during the period from 1886 to 1889,
within which he also gave as much time as possible to reading
medicine. Finally he entered the Kansas City Medical College, and in
the same he was graduated in 1888, with the well earned degree of
Doctor of Medicine.

In 1891, the year following the organization of Oklahoma Territory,
Doctor Kennedy and his brother, Dr. James L., came to the new
territory and established themselves in the practice of medicine at
Tulsa, a frontier village that then claimed only a few business
places and a small population. The town had two general stores, a
modest hardware store, a drug store and one hotel, known as the Owens
Hotel. The Kennedy brothers erected, in 1898, the first brick
building in Tulsa, and this was placed in use as their office. These
two pioneer physicians endured their full quota of experience in
connection with the pioneer days and their earnest and faithful
services in their profession, as coupled with their kindliness and
maturity of judgment, made them each worthy of the title of "guide,
philosopher and friend" to the many families to whom they ministered
in the early days. Both by day and night did the subject of this
review pursue his humane mission, often driving over the wild and
thinly settled country for distances varying from thirty-five to
sixty miles in a single night, and it may well be understood that his
presence was hailed with satisfaction in many isolated and humble
homes and that he has retained impregnable vantage-place in the
esteem of the community in which he is an honored pioneer.

In 1907 Doctor Kennedy retired from the active practice of his
profession, owing to the demands placed upon him by his business and
property interests. He became concerned with the development of the
oil industry in the Oklahoma fields, and had the prescience to make
large and judicious investments in Oklahoma land, his holdings now
aggregating 3,500 acres. The major part of this extensive landed
estate is rented to desirable tenants, but the doctor personally
gives his attention to the supervision of a specially well improved
farm on which he raises the best grades of cattle and swine, besides
giving due attention to diversified agriculture.

Doctor Kennedy was one of the original members of the Oklahoma
Territory Medical Society, in the affairs of which he was active and
influential and as a member of which he assisted in its
transformation into the present Oklahoma State Medical Association.
He was a charter member of the Tulsa County Medical Society, is
identified with the American Medical Association, and for ten years
he served as a member of the board of United States pension examining
surgeons for Tulsa County. He was one of the organizers of the
Oklahoma Banking Company and served for several years as its
president. In politics Doctor Kennedy is unwavering in his allegiance
to the republican party; he is affiliated with Tulsa Lodge, No. 71,
Ancient Free & Accepted Masons; and in the Guthrie consistory of the
Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite of Masonry he has received the thirty-
second degree, besides which he is a member of Akdar Temple, Ancient
Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, at Tulsa.

On the 30th of September, 1896, was recorded the marriage of Doctor
Kennedy to Miss Agnes LOMBARD, who was born in California, and whose
death occurred March 29, 1912. She is survived by seven children,--
James A., Forrest L., Thelma, Cordelia, Samuel Grant, Jr., Joseph E.
and Minnie.

Typed for OKGenWeb by: Earline Sparks Barger, December 16, 1998.

[NOTE: 07-1999 see Kennedy & Young pages at
http://millennium.fortunecity.com/sherwood/553/index.html
or contact Kesel barb@aub.com ]