G. Kennedy Burial

KENNEDY ROLLINS

Posted By: marilyn o'connor (email)
Date: 10/12/2007 at 10:39:50

Osage News
March 27,1941

ASHES OF G.KENNEDY
HIS WIFE, DAUGHTER
BURIED SATURDAY

Osagers have known for the past three months that burial services for Guy Kennedy 99, Osage's last Civil war vetern were pending, but they didn't know that like services had been postponed for his late wife since 1919 and for a daughter, since probably some ten years before that.

Perhaps the most surprised persons of all were employes of the local bank in whose vault the remains of Mrs. Kennedy and the daughter Mary Lillian Rollins, had been on deposit for the past ten or more years.
They remember that Mr. Kennedy came in a long time ago and said he wanted to rent a large deposit box and was given the largest one available. Later Mr. Kennedy came back with two packages wrapped in newspapers (dated 1921) and placed them in the box. As usual no questions were asked and in this case no information was volunteered.
Then, after the death of Mr. Kennedy in December in California, a great-niece, Mrs. Russell Esslinger in charge of the late Mr. Kennedy;s affairs, wired to Osage asking that the bank release the contents of the deposit box and turn them over to the Champion Funeral home. Mr. Kennedy died at the Esslinger home at Porterville, and his remains were cremated and sent to Osage.
Friends say that the urns containing the two women's ashes were in Mr. Kennedy's room until he finally took them to the bank. Where the daughter's remains had been prior to her mother's death was not disclosed.
The family Bible of the Kennedy famly, now in the possession of an Osage family friend, says that Sarah L. Beebe Kennedy, 74, died in Minneapolis, Nov. 24, 1919. May L. Rollins, the daughter was born in Osage June 6,1871 and died in Minneapolis Nov. 19, 1919. Cremation of both women was at Lakwoood cemetery in Minneapolis.
The Kennedys had a lot in the Osage Cemetery in which another child is buried, and friends say that was his reason for not having the ashes interred long ago. He brought them to Osge when he moved here from Minneapolis to be near relatives and never got around to having it done.
The Rev. Stiles Lessly conducted the burial service for the three. Guy E. Kennedy, dead since Dec. 1940, his wife, dead for 22 years and their daughter, dead for 31 years.