Eliza Kenny: The Other Grandmother

Scattered Stones › The Women Who Stayed › Episode 3: Eliza Kenny

Scattered Stones  ·  The Women Who Stayed

Episode 3  ·  The Other Grandmother

Eliza Kenny

The Woman Whose Story Lives in What's Missing

c. 1810  —  1887

Ireland  ·  Brooklyn, New York

She was born in Ireland around 1810. She married Richard Kenny in Brooklyn in 1843. She was widowed by 1854 and she never remarried. She raised two sons alone for thirty-three years. She ran a grocery on Walworth Street. She died in a charity hospital. She has no grave marker of her own. Almost every fact we know about her, we know because of what she didn't do.

Named for a Woman We Barely Know

The Paradox at the Heart of This Story

On July 28, 1879, in Brooklyn, Margaret McKenny Kenny gave birth to a daughter. The child was named Elizabeth. She would be called Lillian for most of her life, and formally renamed Mary Elizabeth at her Catholic baptism. But her first name — the name on her 1880 census line, ten months old in her father's household — was Eliza. She was named for her paternal grandmother, Eliza Kenny, who was sixty-nine years old that summer and living in the same household.

It is the only thing we can say with certainty about what her family thought of her. The naming is the evidence. Her granddaughter — born into a Brooklyn Irish household where two grandmothers were present and where Margaret was already pregnant with her next child — carried Eliza's name. Not Ann, her maternal grandmother. Not a Catholic saint. Eliza.

And then, within a decade, the name stopped being used. By 1888 Elizabeth was "Lillian" to everyone. By 1920 she was officially Elizabeth Kenny on her marriage license, and Lillian Corbett in the census three months later. The granddaughter renamed herself out of the inheritance she had carried at birth.

This is the shape of Eliza Kenny's story. She is remembered and not remembered in the same gesture. The documents name her because they have to: a widow needs a maiden identifier, a grandmother appears in a household, a death index lists her among the dead. But the substance of her — where in Ireland she came from, what her maiden name was, what she looked like, what she thought of anything — is gone. She is the negative space around which the rest of the Kenny–McKenny family becomes visible.

Ireland Before Brooklyn

c. 1810  ·  What We Don't Know

Eliza Kenny was born in Ireland around 1810. Her age is derived from the 1887 death index ("age 77") and the 1880 federal census ("age 70") — dates that back-calculate to roughly 1810, give or take two years. No earlier document has been found. Her birth parish, her townland, her parents' names, and her maiden name all remain unknown. Her surname in marriage — Kenny — is the name we know her by, and the possibility that it was also her maiden name (she married a Kenny) is not yet ruled out.

She would have crossed to New York in the 1830s or 1840s — before the worst of the Famine, or in its early years, depending on when the crossing occurred. The 1843 Brooklyn marriage record is the first evidence we have that she was in America. She was approximately thirty-three years old that June.

The Marriage of Rich and Eliza Kenny

St. Paul's Catholic Church, Brooklyn  ·  June 23, 1843

On June 23, 1843, Richard Kenny and Eliza Kenny were married at St. Paul's Roman Catholic Church in Brooklyn. Their witnesses were John Rielly and Eliza (El.) Farrell — a detail preserved in the parish register and later in James R. Reilly's compiled transcription of St. Paul's baptism and marriage records. The register gives only first names, the surname Kenny for both bride and groom, the date, and the witnesses. It does not give parents' names. It does not give ages or birthplaces.

Primary Source  ·  Marriage Register — St. Paul's R.C. Church, Brooklyn, June 23, 1843

"Kenny, Rich — 23 June 1843 — Eliza Kenny — John Rielly & El. Farrel." St. Paul's was one of the earliest Catholic parishes in Brooklyn, serving the growing Irish immigrant community of the 1830s and 1840s. The marriage register is one of only two documents Eliza ever appears in under her own name rather than in relation to someone else (the other being her 1887 death).

Marriage Register — Richard and Eliza Kenny, June 23, 1843, St. Paul's R.C. Church, Brooklyn. The first documented moment of Eliza's American life.

Richard Kenny was a laborer, Irish-born, about the same age as Eliza. By the 1850 census he would be recorded as forty — placing his birth around 1810 as well. He and Eliza would have two surviving sons: James, born about 1839, and John, born about 1845.

1850: The Only Census with the Family Intact

Ward 5, Brooklyn  ·  October 14, 1850

The federal census enumerator came down Ward 5 on October 14, 1850, and found the Kenny household at dwelling 1018, family 2349. Richard, age 40, laborer, Ireland. Elizabeth, age 40, Ireland. James, age 4, New York. John, age 3, New York. Four people, two generations, one intact household. It is the only census in which all four of them appear together. Richard would be dead within four years.

Primary Source  ·  1850 Federal Census, Ward 5, Brooklyn, Kings County

Enumerated October 14, 1850 by S. Badeau, Assistant Marshal. Dwelling 1018, family 2349: Richard Keeney, 40, M, Laborer, Ireland; Elizabeth, 40, F, Ireland; James, 4, M, N.Y.; John, 3, M, N.Y. The only documented moment when Richard, Eliza, James, and John are all recorded together under one roof.

1850 Census — the complete Kenny family. Richard would be dead before the next federal enumeration.

Widowed in 1854

Richard's Death  ·  Holy Cross Cemetery, Section PLOT, Row 10, Plot 31

Richard Kenny died in July 1854. His burial at Holy Cross Cemetery was on July 15, 1854, in Section PLOT, Row 10, Plot 31, Grave 41' FRONT. He was approximately forty-four years old. Eliza was approximately forty-four as well. James was eight. John was five or six.

No death certificate survives. Brooklyn's pre-1866 vital records were incomplete and many are now lost. But the cemetery kept its book. The plot Richard was buried in that summer would eventually hold him, Eliza, both sons — and would be shared with his brother Thomas Kenny's family. It is the Kenny family plot: not the plot Ann Lynch would purchase at Holy Cross seventeen years later for her daughter Margaret and herself, but a separate, earlier, parallel plot in the same cemetery, bought by the Kenny side of the family.

Primary Source  ·  Holy Cross Cemetery Burial Record — Richard Kenney, July 15, 1854

Catholic Cemeteries of the Diocese of Brooklyn, "Find a Loved One" record. Richard Kenney interred July 15, 1854. Plots Section, Row 10, Plot 31, Grave 41' FRONT. The plot would eventually receive James (1875), Eliza (1887), and John (1888), and is shared with Richard's brother Thomas Kenny's family. Confirmed directly by the cemetery by telephone.

Holy Cross Cemetery burial record — Richard Kenney, July 15, 1854. The plot Eliza would join thirty-three years later.

Eliza was forty-four years old in 1854, with two small boys and no husband. She did not remarry. In every subsequent record — for the next thirty-three years — she is a widow.

1855: The First Record of a Widow

New York State Census, 7th Ward, Brooklyn  ·  June 23, 1855

One year after Richard's burial, the New York State enumerator found Eliza in the 7th Ward of Brooklyn, living in a frame house. She was forty-nine (so recorded, though she was probably forty-five), listed as a grocer. With her were her sons James, nine, and John, seven. The household had moved out of Ward 5 and into Ward 7 — the same neighborhood where, fifteen years later, George and Ann Lynch McKenna would be raising their own daughters a few blocks away.

The 1855 census is the first document that shows Eliza alone with her sons. It is the template for every subsequent census in her life: Eliza as head of household, her sons present, no husband. For thirty-three years this household structure would hold. Other women in her situation remarried within two or three years — the economic pressure on an Irish widow with small children in 1850s Brooklyn was extreme. Eliza did not.

Primary Source  ·  1855 New York State Census, 7th Ward, Brooklyn

Enumerated June 23, 1855 by Robert Van Allen, Marshal. 1st Election District, 7th Ward. Dwelling 576, household 740: Eliza Kenney, 49, Mother, Ireland, 20 years, Grocery; James Kenney, 9, son, Kings County; John Kenney, 7, son, Kings County. The "20 years" entry indicates Eliza had been in the United States since approximately 1835. Frame house. Right side of page.

1855 Census — Eliza as head of household, widow one year, running a grocery. The pattern that would hold for thirty-three years.

The Grocery Years

Walworth Street  ·  1862 – 1875

By 1862 Eliza had established a grocery on Walworth Street near Park Avenue. She appears in the Brooklyn Directory that year as "Kenny, Eliza wid. grocery, Walworth nr Park Av." Two other Kenny entries are on the same page: James Kenny, laborer, at Walworth near Park Avenue (her son, age approximately sixteen); and Thomas Kenny, foreman, at Park Avenue corner Spencer (her husband Richard's brother, the well-documented Brooklyn Thomas Kenny whose funeral notice in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle in April 1891 would identify him as "an old resident of this city," father of John Kenny of the City Works Department and uncle of Detective John Corcoran of the Bedford Avenue Station).

Brooklyn City Directory, 1862 Kenny, Eliza  wid.  grocery, Walworth nr Park Av
Kenny, James  laborer  h r Walworth n Park Av
Kenny, Thomas  foreman  h Park Ave c Spencer

The directory record is compact but it tells us a great deal. Eliza owned — or rented with her name on the lease — a grocery at a specific street address. She was listed in her own right, by her own name. Her brother-in-law lived a block away. Her son was already listed as a laborer at sixteen. This is the stable Kenny cluster that had formed in the 7th and 21st Wards of Brooklyn by the early 1860s.

Running a grocery was how a widow in the 1850s and 1860s survived without a husband. It required credit, the willingness of a landlord to sign a lease, enough literacy to keep accounts, and a neighborhood that would buy from an Irish woman. It put Eliza at a counter six days a week for thirteen documented years.

Primary Source  ·  Brooklyn City Directory, 1862

1862 Directory — the Kenny cluster on Walworth Street. Eliza's grocery. James, a laborer. Thomas, the brother-in-law.

Primary Source  ·  1860 Federal Census, Ward 9, District 1, Brooklyn

Enumerated 1860. Dwelling 623, family 872. Eliza Kenny, 47, Ireland, Grocery, personal estate $200; James Kenny, 14; John Kenny, 12. Six years widowed, still running a grocery, now with $200 in personal property recorded — a small but documented estate. Her sons are fourteen and twelve, old enough to help in the store. The household has moved from Ward 7 into Ward 9, but Eliza remains head of household, remains a grocer, and remains unremarried.

1860 Census — Eliza at 47, grocer, $200 personal estate, with James (14) and John (12).

Eliza continued to run a grocery at least into the early 1870s — she is documented with a grocery at 66 Dean Street in 1873. The directories and the censuses repeat the pattern: widow of Richard, grocer, 75 Walworth Street, 7th or 21st Ward. The address would eventually be the one where John Kenny himself would later be listed, first as "matmkr" and then as "hatter" — living with his mother at the house she had held since the 1860s.

1870: The Mat Maker Emerges

John's First Documented Trade  ·  The Household Under Eliza

The 1870 federal census caught the family in Ward 21 of Brooklyn, where they had migrated as the neighborhood grew. Elizabeth Renney (the enumerator's spelling), age 56, keeping house, Ireland. James, age 22, working in hat factory. John, age 20, Mat Maker. This is the first appearance of John's distinctive occupation — the trade that, later called "matmkr" in the directories, would become the thread that allowed him to be correctly identified among the dozens of John Kennys in Brooklyn.

Primary Source  ·  1870 Federal Census, Part of 21st Ward, Brooklyn

Enumerated June 20, 1870. Dwelling 245, family 468. Renney [Kenney] Elizabeth, 56, F, W, Keeps House, Ireland; James, 22, M, W, Work in hat factory, N.Y.; John, 20, M, W, Mat Maker, N.Y. First documented appearance of John's trade as mat maker — the distinguishing occupational marker that would allow him to be separated from every other John Kenny in Brooklyn for the remainder of his documented life.

1860 Census — Eliza, widow, grocery, with James and John. The household continues.

The 1875 New York State census records the household similarly: Eliza Kenny, 60, mother, Ireland, keeping house; James Kenny, 27, son, Kings, hatter; John Kenny, 25, son, Kings, mat weaver. Two sons, still unmarried, still under their mother's roof. James has moved from laborer to hatter. John from mat maker to mat weaver (the trades overlapped).

Primary Source  ·  1875 New York State Census, 5th Election District, 21st Ward, Brooklyn

Enumerated June 1875. Dwelling 79, family 65: Eliza Kenny, 60, Ireland; James Kenny, 27, son, Kings, Hatter; John Kenny, 25, son, Kings, Mat Weaver. James had moved into his father's and brother's trade as a hatter; John was still in the mat-making trade that would eventually become his livelihood. Five months later James would be dead of smallpox.

1875 Census — Eliza with both sons. James as hatter. John as mat weaver. Five months from James's death.

1875: James Dies of Smallpox

79 Walworth Street  ·  November 25, 1875

James Kenny died on November 25, 1875, at 79 Walworth Street, Ward 21, Brooklyn. He was twenty-nine years old. The cause of death was smallpox. He was buried at Holy Cross Cemetery — in the same plot where his father lay, Section PLOT, Row 10, Plot 31. His death certificate listed him as a hatter, Irish-parented, U.S.-born. It did not list his parents' names, because Brooklyn death certificates of 1875 did not record them. The document recorded the fact of James's death, but not the identity of the mother it had orphaned.

Eliza was now sixty-five years old. She had buried her husband. She had now buried a son. She had one son remaining, John, age twenty-seven, unmarried, a mat maker living in her household. She continued to run the household alone.

Primary Source  ·  Death Certificate — James Kenny, November 25, 1875

Brooklyn Certificate of Death No. 11355. Age 29; Color: white; Single; Occupation: Hatter; Birthplace: U.S.; Father's birthplace: Ireland; Mother's birthplace: Ireland (ditto). Place of Death: 79 Walworth Street, 21st Ward. Attended by Dr. J. Brown, 403 Kent Avenue. First (primary) cause: Small Pox. Place of Burial: Holy Cross. Date of Burial: Nov 26, 1875. Undertaker: J. Tracy, 176 Kent Avenue.

Death Certificate No. 11355 — James Kenny, age 29, smallpox, 79 Walworth Street. Eliza had now buried both a husband and a son.

The Four Words

Brooklyn City Directory, 1879  ·  75 Walworth

In the 1879 Brooklyn City Directory, an entry appears:

Brooklyn City Directory, 1879 Kenny Elizabeth  wid. Richard  h r 75 Walworth

Elsewhere on the same page: Kenny John, matmkr, h r 75 Walworth. And across the page, on a separate cluster: Kenny Thomas, at 525 Park Ave (the uncle, Richard's brother); Kenny John, 26 Spencer (the cousin, Thomas's son, later of the Brooklyn City Works Department).

The phrase "wid. Richard" is the single most consequential phrase in the entire research chain that rebuilt this family. Four words. A widow, named, tied to a dead husband, at a specific address, living with a specific son. For decades the Kenny family had been lost in the mass of John Kennys and Eliza Kennys and James Kennys in Brooklyn directories — dozens of them, impossible to distinguish. Those four words anchored the right Elizabeth, the right Richard, the right John, the right address. Everything else in the research proceeded from there.

Four words — "wid. Richard" — named the mother, named the dead husband, and gave the family back its proper shape. The Methodology Pivot

Primary Source  ·  1879 Brooklyn City Directory — Kenny Elizabeth wid. Richard

"Kenny Elizabeth, wid. Richard, h r 75 Walworth." The h r designation (house, rear) indicates a rear or back-yard dwelling — a smaller unit behind a front house on the same lot. Eliza lived in the back house with her surviving son John. The same page also shows Kenny, John, matmkr, h r 75 Walworth — mother and son at the same address, the son now appearing in his own right as a mat maker.

1879 Directory — the entry that rebuilt the family. "Wid. Richard" named the dead husband and anchored the mother.

1880: The Grandmother in the House

John and Margaret's Household  ·  75 Walworth  ·  Infant Eliza in the Cradle

The 1880 federal census caught one of the most important moments in the entire Kenny family story. John Kenny, 28, works mat factory, with his wife Margaret, 27, keeping house, and their infant daughter Eliza, ten months old, born in July 1879. And in the household: Eliza Kenny, 60 (she was 70; the enumerator reduced the age), mother, at home.

Four generations of evidence converge on this single census line. Eliza, the widow. John, her son. Margaret, her daughter-in-law. Baby Eliza, her granddaughter — named for her. All under one roof at 75 Walworth Street in June 1880.

Primary Source  ·  1880 Federal Census — Kenny Household, 75 Walworth

Enumerated June 8, 1880. Family 436. Kenny John, 28, Works Mat Factory; Margt, 27, Wife, Keeping House; Eliza, 60, Mother, At home; Eliza, 10/12 July, Daughter, At home. The father's birthplace for Eliza (the mother) is Ireland; for Eliza (the infant granddaughter) it is given as New York. Three generations of Eliza Kennys are not present — just one adult Eliza and one infant Eliza, the grandmother and her granddaughter sharing a name. Mother-in-law and daughter-in-law in the same household, raising the infant together.

1880 Census — Eliza (grandmother) and Eliza (infant granddaughter) in the same household. The only census that captures them together.

This is the moment of the naming. The baby had been baptized Elizabeth at St. Patrick's in July 1879 and was called Eliza on the federal census line ten months later. She was the eldest grandchild; she was named for the widow who had raised John. Eliza the grandmother would live another seven years. Eliza the granddaughter would outlive her by sixty-three.

The Last Years

1880 – 1887  ·  From Walworth Street to Kings County Hospital

After 1880 Eliza disappears from the directories. She was seventy years old that year. The Brooklyn City Directory entries that had carried her name since 1862 — "Kenny Elizabeth wid. Richard" — stopped being published for her. Whether she moved in entirely with John and Margaret, or whether the directory simply stopped recording her at some point in her seventies, cannot be determined from the record.

What is clear is the next event. On December 2, 1887, Eliza Kenney died at Kings County Hospital in Flatbush. She was seventy-seven years old. The Record of Deaths for the Town of Flatbush gives the cause as "Asthenia" and "Senectus" — extreme weakness and old age — secondary: "Senectus." The attending physician was Dr. Jno. A. Arnold. Place of burial: Holy Cross Cemetery.

Primary Source  ·  Record of Deaths, Town of Flatbush, Kings County, December 2, 1887

Entry 744. Eliza Kenney, died December 2, 1887, Kings County Hospital, Flatbush. Widow, Ireland, birthplace Motherland [Ireland]. Place of burial: Holy Cross. Cause: Asthenia / Senectus. Attending physician: Jno. A. Arnold, M.D., Kings County Hospital. She had spent her final weeks or months in the public charity hospital in Flatbush, Brooklyn's indigent medical institution, rather than at home or in a Catholic hospital.

Record of Deaths, Town of Flatbush — Eliza Kenney, December 2, 1887. Kings County Hospital. Holy Cross burial.

Primary Source  ·  New York State Death Index, 1887 — Kenny, Eliza

New York State Death Index 1887. Kenny, Eliza. 2 Dec. Flatbush. Certificate 38246. Independent confirmation of the Town of Flatbush record.

1887 Death Index — the independent confirmation.

Kings County Hospital was the public charity hospital of Brooklyn, serving the indigent, the chronically ill, and the elderly without family resources. That Eliza died there — rather than at home, or at St. Catherine's (the Catholic charity hospital where John Kenny himself would die eleven months later) — suggests the household had reached the limit of what it could provide at home. She was seventy-seven. Her remaining son John was already showing the tuberculosis symptoms that would kill him. Her daughter-in-law Margaret had been dead three years. The household at 75 Walworth was now John, her son; his surviving children Elizabeth (eight) and Mary Agnes (four); and possibly Eliza herself until some point in late 1887, when she was admitted to Kings County Hospital for what would be her final illness.

She was buried at Holy Cross Cemetery on December 2 or 3, 1887 — in the Kenny family plot she had carried since 1854. Section PLOT, Row 10, Plot 31. She joined Richard and James. She would be joined eleven months later by John. Together the four of them — husband, wife, two sons — rest in the plot that Richard's death had first required.

The Kenny Plot

Holy Cross Cemetery  ·  Section PLOT, Row 10, Plot 31

The plot where Eliza lies is not marked with a headstone of her own. The headstone at Section PLOT, Row 10, Plot 31 bears the name of Thomas Kenny and his family — Richard's brother, the well-documented Brooklyn foreman whose surviving son John Kenny worked for the City Works Department. Thomas purchased or held the plot; his family's names are carved on the stone.

But the cemetery's burial records, confirmed directly by telephone with Holy Cross, place four members of Eliza's immediate family in the same ground:

July 15, 1854

Richard Kenney, Eliza's husband, interred. Section PLOT, Row 10, Plot 31, Grave 41' FRONT.

November 26, 1875

James Kenny, Eliza's elder son, age 29, smallpox. Buried in the same plot.

December 2 – 3, 1887

Eliza Kenny, widow, age 77, buried in the same plot.

December 3, 1888

John Kenny, Eliza's younger son, age 36, pulmonary tuberculosis. Buried in the same plot, eleven months after his mother.

April 15, 1891

Thomas Kenny, Eliza's brother-in-law (Richard's brother), age approximately 70, buried in the family plot along with his son John J. Kenny and other members of his family.

Family Plot  ·  Section PLOT, Row 10, Plot 31

The visible grave marker at the Kenny family plot, Holy Cross Cemetery, bearing the name of Thomas Kenny and his family. Eliza, Richard, James, and John lie in the same plot — Sec PLOT, Row 10, Plot 31, Grave 41' FRONT — confirmed directly by Holy Cross Cemetery. Four generations of evidence are buried here without individual markers. This is a Kenny family plot of the Irish Catholic working poor: space in the ground, names in the cemetery book, no personal stone for Eliza.

The Kenny family plot — Thomas's headstone marks it; Eliza, Richard, James, and John lie here without markers of their own.

Margaret — John's wife, who died in May 1884 — is not here. She is three-quarters of a mile away at the same cemetery, in Lett Row L Plot 336, with her own mother Ann Lynch McKenna and her infant daughter. The two grandmothers of Elizabeth and Mary Agnes Kenny never lay in the same ground. The two plots, Ann's at Lett Row L and the Kenny plot at Section PLOT Row 10, exist as parallel anchors in Brooklyn's Irish Catholic cemetery — one on the McKenny side, one on the Kenny side, each holding its own portion of the family the two women produced together.

Two Grandmothers, One Family, Two Plots

What Eliza Shared with Ann Lynch

Eliza Kenny and Ann Lynch McKenna never met in any document we can find, though they must have known each other. Their children married each other — John Kenny married Margaret McKenny in the mid-1870s. Their granddaughters were Elizabeth and Mary Agnes. They lived in adjoining Brooklyn wards: Ann in Ward 7 on Kent Avenue, Eliza in Ward 21 on Walworth Street, within a fifteen-minute walk of each other.

They were born roughly the same year (c. 1810 and c. 1822). They both came from Ireland. They both married men named Kenn/Ken — in Ann's case McKenney, in Eliza's case Kenny — who both died of respiratory illness decades before their own deaths. They were both widowed young and neither remarried. They both raised their children alone. They both buried a grown child in their own lifetime. They both died in Brooklyn in successive years — Eliza December 2, 1887; Ann May 10, 1888 — five months apart.

And they are both, in their own ways, the root of the family. Ann's plot holds the McKenny/Robertson line (through Margaret and her daughter Mary Agnes). Eliza's plot holds the Kenny line proper (through her sons). The children of John and Margaret — Elizabeth Kenny Corbett and Mary Agnes Kenny Robertson — were the living intersection of both grandmothers. Elizabeth, born in 1879, was named for Eliza. Mary Agnes, born in 1883, was named for her aunt Mary MacKinney (Ann's daughter) and shared Ann's own name as well.

Two Irish widows. Two Brooklyn wards. Two Holy Cross plots. One family, scattered between them.

What We Do Not Know

The Shape of Eliza's Absence

Almost every fact we have established about Eliza Kenny is a positive datum — a census line, a directory entry, a burial record. But the shape of her story is defined by the facts that are missing:

We do not know her maiden name. Brooklyn pre-1866 death certificates did not require it, and she died in a period when mother's maiden names were not recorded on her children's death certificates either. The 1843 marriage register gives only "Kenny" — it is possible she was a Kenny by birth who married another Kenny (not uncommon among Irish families in the same county), but no documentary evidence has confirmed or refuted this.

We do not know her county or parish in Ireland. All records give only "Ireland." No Irish parish register, no passenger list, no naturalization petition has been found that can be matched confidently to her.

We do not know the date of her emigration. The 1855 census "20 years" entry suggests c. 1835, but this is a single data point from a document whose other ages are approximate. She may have come in the late 1830s. She may have come with Richard already; they may have met in Brooklyn.

We do not know what Richard did before his 1854 death beyond "laborer." We do not know how he died. We do not know whether Eliza had other children who died as infants before the 1850 census.

We do not know what she looked like. No photograph of Eliza Kenny is known to exist. No description survives.

We do not know what she thought of Ann Lynch, or of Margaret McKenny, or of the grandchildren who bore her name. We do not know what she thought of the son who outlived her by only a year, or of the country she came to and the country she left. She ran a grocery for thirteen years and raised two sons alone for thirty-three years and did not remarry, and the only meaningful sentence she has in the historical record is the one she did not write herself — "wid. Richard." Widow of Richard. Defined by her husband even in her own absence from the page.

The documentary paradox: Eliza is everywhere in the Kenny family records and nowhere in her own right. Her grandchildren were named for her. Her plot holds her husband and both her sons. Her four-word directory entry is the phrase that rebuilt the entire family tree. And yet she comes to us almost entirely through what she did not do, did not say, and did not leave behind. She is the most well-documented unknown woman in the series.

Eliza Kenny

Vital Statistics

Born	c. 1810, Ireland (maiden name, county, parish unknown)
Emigrated	United States, approximately 1835 (per "20 years" entry in 1855 NY State census)
Married	Richard Kenny, June 23, 1843, St. Paul's R.C. Church, Brooklyn. Witnesses: John Rielly & Eliza Farrell
Children	James Kenny (c. 1846 – November 25, 1875, smallpox, age 29); John Kenny (c. 1846 – November 30, 1888, pulmonary tuberculosis, age ~42)
Widowed	July 1854, Brooklyn, New York, at approximately age 44
Did not remarry	Confirmed across every subsequent record, 1854–1887
Occupation	Grocer. Documented 1855 (Ward 7), 1862 (Walworth near Park Av), 1873 (66 Dean Street). "Keeping house" in later censuses
Residences	Ward 5, Brooklyn (1850); Ward 7, Brooklyn (1855); Walworth near Park Avenue (1862); 79 Walworth Street (1875, James's death); 75 Walworth Street (1879–1880, with John)
Died	December 2, 1887, Kings County Hospital, Flatbush, Brooklyn; age 77
Cause of death	Asthenia, Senectus (extreme weakness, old age)
Attending physician	Dr. Jno. A. Arnold, Kings County Hospital
Buried	Holy Cross Cemetery, Brooklyn, Section PLOT, Row 10, Plot 31, Grave 41' FRONT — the Kenny family plot (no individual marker)
Certificate	No. 38246, New York State Death Index 1887 (Town of Flatbush)
Legacy	Granddaughter Elizabeth "Lillian" Kenny Corbett (1879–1950) named for her; the four words "wid. Richard" in the 1879 Brooklyn directory became the methodological key that rebuilt the Kenny family tree

Researcher's Note

Eliza Kenny was the great-great-great-grandmother of the researcher. Her son John was the researcher's great-great-grandfather; her granddaughter Mary Agnes Kenny Robertson was the researcher's great-grandmother; her great-granddaughter Lillian Josephine Robertson O'Brien was the researcher's grandmother. Eliza's name passed to her other granddaughter Elizabeth ("Aunt Lillian Corbett"), who was the researcher's great-grand-aunt. Documentary confirmation of the Kenny family plot was obtained by telephone directly with Holy Cross Cemetery, Brooklyn. Research by Mary Hamall Morales, 2018–2026. Ireland-side research — Eliza's maiden name, county, parish, and emigration — remains ongoing. The 1843 St. Paul's marriage register is the earliest known record of her American life; the 1879 Brooklyn directory entry "Kenny Elizabeth, wid. Richard, h r 75 Walworth" is the four-word phrase that made every subsequent reconstruction possible.

Scattered Stones  ·  The Women Who Stayed

Continue the Series

Six generations of women who stayed, kept, and remembered. One Brooklyn family, 1810–1942.

Return to Series Index Episode 2: The Root Episode 1: Three Names, One Life

Document Gallery

Primary sources documenting Eliza Kenny (c. 1810–1887)  ·  Click any image to enlarge

1843 — Marriage Register

St. Paul's R.C. Church, Brooklyn

1850 — Federal Census

The family intact, Ward 5

1855 — NY State Census

Widow with two sons, grocery

1862 — Brooklyn Directory

Grocery on Walworth near Park

1860 — Federal Census

Ward 9, Eliza still a grocer

1870 — Federal Census

John emerges as "Mat Maker"

1875 — NY State Census

James hatter, John mat weaver

1875 — James's Death Cert

Smallpox, 79 Walworth, age 29

1879 — "Wid. Richard"

The four-word breakthrough

1879 — Directory Page

The Kenny cluster, full context

1880 — The Naming

Eliza & infant Eliza, same roof

1887 — Record of Deaths

Kings County Hospital, Flatbush

1887 — Death Index

Cert. No. 38246, independent

1888 — John's Death Cert

Eleven months after his mother

Richard Kenney — Plot

Sec PLOT, Row 10, Plot 31

Thomas & Richard Kenny

Brothers, shared family plot

The Kenny Family Plot

No individual marker for Eliza