Two Families, One Story : Three Weddings
Three Weddings
We have established that Lawrence Kenny and Hugh Connors were neighbors on the Montgomery Estate. The 1850 Hickey Map recorded them as tenants—Lawrence at No. 19, Hugh at No. 236—farming the same red soil, paying rent to the same landlord, attending the same church. Their children grew up walking the same roads to St. Eugene's, working the same harvests, sharing the same community gatherings. What happened next was perhaps inevitable: between November 1866 and November 1868, three weddings would transform two neighboring families into one extended kinship network.
& Margaret Connors
& Edward Connors
& Bridget Connors
These were not random unions. They followed a pattern that would have been familiar to anyone from the tight-knit Catholic communities of southeast Ireland or the immigrant settlements of Atlantic Canada: families who trusted each other, who had proven their reliability over years of neighboring, who saw advantage in binding their fates together through marriage. The Kenny and Connors families did not merely intermarry—they interlocked.
☘ The First Wedding: James Kenny & Margaret Connors
James Kenny, son of Lawrence and the late Catherine Corcoran, was approximately 34 years old when he married Margaret Connors, daughter of Hugh Connors and Mary Henepy. The marriage was celebrated at St. Eugene's Roman Catholic Church in Covehead—the parish church that served both families on Lot 34.
Marriage register page from St. Eugene's Church showing the November 26, 1866 marriage of James Kenny and Margaret Connors. The entry appears in the upper right quadrant. Note the witnesses: Edward Connors (Margaret's brother) and Bridget Kenny (James's sister)—the very same couple who would marry three months later.
The witnesses tell a story of their own. Edward Connors—Margaret's brother—stood as witness for James. Bridget Kenny—James's sister—witnessed for Margaret. These two witnesses would themselves be married just three months later, suggesting the match had already been arranged. In the small world of Lot 34's Catholic community, the wedding of James and Margaret may have been as much a family negotiation as a romantic courtship.
The Pattern Emerges
The choice of witnesses reveals that the second Kenny-Connors marriage was already in motion before the first was complete. Edward Connors and Bridget Kenny witnessing together at the November 1866 wedding suggests their own February 1867 marriage was predetermined—perhaps arranged simultaneously with James and Margaret's union.
Margaret Connors was born February 4, 1840, at Covehead—the daughter of Hugh Connors and Mary Henepy. James Kenny was born approximately 1832 in Newfoundland, before his parents Lawrence and Catherine emigrated to Prince Edward Island. Their marriage united two families who had been neighbors for at least sixteen years.
The couple would have four children: Catherine (b. 1869), Lawrence (b. 1870), Thomas (b. 1871), and Hugh (b. 1873). But tragedy would strike early. James Kenny died on June 25, 1872, at approximately 40 years old—leaving Margaret a widow with four young children, the youngest not yet born. She would eventually remarry and migrate to Chicago, where she died on July 21, 1925, and was buried at Calvary Cemetery in Evanston, Illinois.
☘ The Second Wedding: Bridget Kenny & Edward Connors
Exactly three months after her brother's wedding, Bridget Kenny married Edward Connors—the very man who had served as witness at James and Margaret's ceremony. This second marriage was celebrated not at St. Eugene's in Covehead, but at St. Dunstan's Basilica in Charlottetown.
Marriage register from St. Dunstan's Basilica, Charlottetown, recording the February 26, 1867 marriage of Edward Connors and Bridget Kenny. The entry appears in the lower left quadrant. Father Thomas Phelan officiated—the same priest who had married James and Margaret three months earlier.
Why St. Dunstan's?
While the first and third Kenny-Connors weddings took place at St. Eugene's Church in Covehead—the parish church for Lot 34—the second wedding was celebrated at St. Dunstan's Basilica in Charlottetown. The reason is unclear. Perhaps the couple wished to be married in the diocese's principal church; perhaps there was a scheduling conflict at St. Eugene's; perhaps family circumstances dictated the change. Father Thomas Phelan officiated at both locations, maintaining continuity in the family's pastoral relationship.
St. Dunstan's Roman Catholic Church, Charlottetown, photographed in 1861—five years before the Bridget Kenny and Edward Connors wedding. Province House is visible in the background. This was the second wooden cathedral on the site; it would later be replaced by the current stone structure.
Bridget Kenny was born approximately February 1839 in Charlottetown, baptized at St. Dunstan's on March 5, 1839. Edward Connors was born around 1842, son of Hugh Connors and Mary Henepy. Their marriage produced four children: Hugh (b. December 8, 1867), Catherine (b. April 18, 1870), Mary Monica (b. April 13, 1872), and Ann (b. July 11, 1873).
The symmetry of the first two weddings is striking: James Kenny married Edward's sister Margaret, while Bridget Kenny married Margaret's brother Edward. Brother and sister from one family married brother and sister from another—a pattern of reciprocal intermarriage that bound the two families together as tightly as any legal contract could.
☘ The Third Wedding: Lawrence Kenny & Bridget Connors
The third Kenny-Connors wedding was perhaps the most remarkable. Lawrence Kenny—the patriarch, the widower, now approximately 64 years old—married Bridget Connors, daughter of Hugh Connors and Mary Henepy. She was his son James's sister-in-law. She was his daughter Bridget's sister-in-law. She was approximately 45 years old herself—beyond typical childbearing years. This was not a marriage to found a new family; it was a marriage to cement an existing alliance.
The original marriage register entry for Lawrence and Bridget has not been located in the surviving St. Eugene's records, but the marriage is confirmed by multiple census enumerations showing them living together as husband and wife. The 1881 census records Lawrence Kenny, age 75, with wife Bridget, age 47. The 1891 census shows Lawrence Kenny, age 84, with wife Briget Kenny, age 58. Family Group Sheets compiled by M.E.M. Brady document the marriage date as November 16, 1868, officiated by Father Thomas Phelan at St. Eugene's Church.
St. Eugene's Roman Catholic Church, Covehead, Prince Edward Island—the parish church where James Kenny married Margaret Connors in 1866 and Lawrence Kenny married Bridget Connors in 1868. The church served the Catholic community of Lot 34 throughout the 19th century.
The Witnesses
Edward Connors and Ann Connors witnessed Lawrence and Bridget's wedding. Edward was both the bride's brother and Lawrence's son-in-law (having married Bridget Kenny in 1867). Ann was Bridget's unmarried sister, who would remain a spinster and be cared for by the Connors family throughout her life—a provision specifically mentioned in Hugh Connors' 1890 will.
☘ The Pattern of Intermarriage
What do three weddings in two years tell us about the Kenny and Connors families? In the context of 19th-century Irish immigrant communities, this pattern of intermarriage was not unusual—it was strategic.
Kenny Family
Lawrence (patriarch)
James (son)
Bridget (daughter)
Alice (daughter)
Connors Family
Hugh (patriarch)
Margaret (daughter)
Edward (son)
Bridget (daughter)
Three marriages created six direct family connections: James Kenny married Margaret Connors; Bridget Kenny married Edward Connors; Lawrence Kenny married Bridget Connors.
The Bonds
24 months
intermarried
priest
What This Pattern Meant
Multiple intermarriages between families served practical purposes beyond romance: Economic alliance—shared labor during harvests, mutual aid during hardship. Land consolidation—keeping property within an extended family network. Social security—ensuring care for elderly parents, unmarried siblings, and orphaned children. Community standing—reinforcing the families' position within the parish. When Lawrence Kenny married Bridget Connors at age 64, he was not seeking to start a new family—he was ensuring his place within the Kenny-Connors alliance that his children had created.
☘ The Echo of 1776
In Episode 2, we explored a tantalizing connection: a 1776 marriage record from County Wexford, Ireland, documenting the union of John Kenny and Catherine Connors. Were the Kenny and Connors families intermarrying in Ireland a century before these PEI weddings? Did the three marriages of 1866-1868 represent a continuation of old-country ties, or merely a coincidence of common Irish surnames?
"The question cannot be answered definitively. But the pattern suggests something deeper than coincidence: families from the same region of Ireland, following similar migration routes through Atlantic Canada, settling on neighboring farms, and ultimately binding their descendants together through marriage—generation after generation."
Hugh Connors' 1890 obituary confirms he emigrated from County Wexford, Ireland. The Kenny family's origins are less documented, but the sponsors at James Kenny's 1832 baptism in Newfoundland—Pierce Grace and Mary Keane—bear names associated with southeast Ireland. Whether these families knew each other before crossing the Atlantic remains a mystery. What is certain is that by the 1860s, they had become inextricably linked.
☘ The Churches: St. Eugene's and St. Dunstan's
Two churches witnessed the Kenny-Connors marriages: St. Eugene's in Covehead (the rural parish church) and St. Dunstan's in Charlottetown (the diocesan cathedral). Both operated under the leadership of Bishop Peter McIntyre, who served as Bishop of Charlottetown from 1860 to 1891.
St. Eugene's Parish, Covehead
Church records for St. Eugene's date back to 1832, indicating it was already well-established by the time of the Kenny-Connors weddings. The parish served the predominantly Irish Catholic community of Lot 34. The original parish register, now on microfilm at PARO (Accession #4181), contains births, marriages, and deaths from 1860-1882. The physical register is held at St. Michael's Parish in Corran Ban. A parish history, Our People: Covehead, P.E.I.; the genealogies of the families of St. Eugene's Parish, was published by the History Committee in 1984.
Father Thomas Phelan, P.P. (Parish Priest), officiated at all three Kenny-Connors weddings. His signature appears on each marriage record, and the parish register notes that marriages were "Recorded" on March 18, 1867—suggesting the entries were copied from working notes into the formal register at a later date. Phelan's consistent presence across all three ceremonies reinforces the sense of these marriages as a coordinated family event rather than three separate unions.
☘ Timeline: The Marriage Years
The three weddings of 1866-1868 bound the Kenny and Connors families together in a web of relationships that would shape their descendants for generations. James Kenny's children—Catherine, Lawrence, Thomas, and Hugh—were cousins to Edward and Bridget's children, and step-grandchildren to their aunt Bridget Connors Kenny. The lines of kinship became so intertwined that nearly every Kenny on Lot 34 was also a Connors, and every Connors a Kenny.
But tragedy would test these bonds. James Kenny died in 1872, leaving Margaret widowed at 32 with four young children. Hugh Connors died in 1890, followed by Lawrence Kenny in 1899. By the end of the century, a new generation—the children and grandchildren of these three weddings—would begin their own migrations, leaving Prince Edward Island for opportunities in the American Midwest. The Kenny-Connors alliance, forged on the farms of Lot 34, would continue in the parishes of Chicago.
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