Two Families, One Story
Three weddings. Two families. One extraordinary story of migration, intermarriage, and survival across four generations and two continents.
In autumn 1832, two Irish families baptized children in St. John's, Newfoundland—their entries pages apart in the same parish register. A Kenny stood as sponsor for a Connors child, the first documented connection between the families.
Thirty-four years later, on Prince Edward Island, their descendants would marry three times over: James Kenny married Margaret Connors; Bridget Kenny married Edward Connors; and the widowed Lawrence Kenny married Bridget Connors—his son's sister-in-law.
This documentary biography series traces both families from their origins in County Wexford, Ireland, through the fishing communities of Newfoundland, the timber camps of New Brunswick, and the tenant farms of Prince Edward Island—to their ultimate destination in Chicago, where they became Americans.
There was a fourth marriage, and it decided where they all ended up. In April 1871, in a Chicago parish church, Mary Connors—Margaret's own sister—married Francis Murphy. When James Kenny died the following year, and Margaret finally left the Island in 1877, she was not choosing a city out of a newspaper. She was going to her sister.
☘ The Kenny Family
Lot 34, Covehead Road
Lawrence Kenny & Catherine Corcoran
James (1832–1872) — m. Margaret Connors
Alice (b. 1 July 1835) — m. John O'Brien, 1869
Bridget (1838–1925?) — m. Edward Connors
Lawrence remarried Bridget Connors in 1868
☘ The Connors Family
Lot 34, Friston Road
Hugh Connors & Mary Henepy
Margaret (1840–1925) — m. James Kenny
Edward (b. after 1841 – d. c.1872–1881) — m. Bridget Kenny
Bridget (1832–?) — m. Lawrence Kenny
Plus 6 more children (Moses, John, David, Eliza, Mary, Ann)
Mary married Frank Murphy and died in Chicago
The 1863 Lake Map shows "L. Kenny" and "H. Connors" as neighbors on Lot 34, their properties separated only by the road their children walked to court each other.
Three Weddings (1866–1868)
November 26, 1866
James Kenny & Margaret Connors
February 26, 1867
Bridget Kenny & Edward Connors
November 16, 1868
Lawrence Kenny & Bridget Connors
The Kenny-Connors Timeline
marriage in Wexford
in Newfoundland
on PEI
dies at 40
for Chicago
dies at 90
☘ Episodes
Twelve episodes, complete: from two baptisms in a Newfoundland register in 1832 to a table on Peaks Island in 2000.
Episode 1: Two Baptisms in Newfoundland
In autumn 1832, both families brought children to be baptized at St. Patrick's Church. A Kenny stood as sponsor for a Connors child—the first documented connection between the families, pages apart in the same parish register.
Read Episode →Episode 2: The Wexford Question
What do we know about the families' Irish origins? A tantalizing 1776 marriage record—John Kenny to Catherine Connors in New Ross—suggests these families may have been intermarrying for generations before they ever reached Canada.
Read Episode →Episode 3: From Tailor to Farmer
Lawrence Kenny—tailor turned farmer—established his family on Prince Edward Island. The 1841 census captures a household in transition: Irish-born parents, Island-born daughters, and a son born in Newfoundland.
Read Episode →Episode 4: Covehead
Life on the Montgomery Estate. Hugh Connors settled his family on 105 acres along Friston Road, where the 1863 Lake Map shows "H. Connors" and "L. Kenny" as neighbors. Their children grew up together, and three would marry.
Read Episode →Episode 5: Three Weddings
In just over two years, two Kenny siblings married two Connors siblings—and then the widowed Kenny patriarch married a third. What did this extraordinary pattern reveal about survival and strategy in immigrant communities?
Read Episode →Episode 6: The Estate of James Kenny
James Kenny died in June 1872 at approximately 40 years old, leaving his wife Margaret pregnant with their fourth child. The probate records tell a story of modest prosperity, legal complications, and a widow's determination.
Read Episode →Episode 7: Hugh Connors, Patriarch
Ninety years of life, from Wexford emigrant to respected patriarch. Hugh's 1890 obituary in the Summerside Journal and his will providing for unmarried daughter Ann mark the end of an era for the Connors family on Prince Edward Island.
Read Episode →Episode 8: To Chicago
Margaret Connors Kenny's journey from PEI widow to Chicago immigrant, part of a larger wave of Maritime Canadian migration to American cities. The family narrative said only that she went "to join relatives named Murphy." This episode finally names them—and finds her sister a few blocks from her own front door.
Read Episode →Episode 9: Captain Kenny
Thomas Patrick Kenny built a successful life in Chicago and married twice—to sisters Mary and Ellen O'Connor. The story of sororate marriage, family continuity, and becoming American.
Read Episode →Episode 10: The Kenny Women of Chicago
Three generations of Kenny women: Margaret Connors Kenny, the immigrant widow who started it all; her daughter Catherine Kenny Flynn, who kept house for her for twenty-five years and raised ten children of her own; Ellen Xavier O'Connor, who married her sister's widower and raised her sister's children; and granddaughters Mary Frances and Margaret Katherine.
Read Episode →Episode 11: Margaret Katherine Kenny
The bridge between two documentary biography series. The youngest of Thomas P. Kenny's seven children, born two days after Christmas 1907 and baptized at St. Sylvester's a fortnight later — a date her own family papers got wrong for decades. She married Thomas Eugene Hamall in June 1930; his bank failed three months later, and a single 1940 census line is the only record that ever found the three of them under one roof.
Read Episode →Episode 12: The Researcher and the Cousins
Every earlier episode rests on paper Mary Ellen Molony Brady gathered. This one is about her, and about the three times the cousins came together to do the work in person: the 1991 trip to Prince Edward Island with her husband Art, ten weeks before he died; Father Tom's golden jubilee in Chicago in 1995; and the week on Peaks Island in 2000, where six cousins sat around a table with the family papers open between them.
Read Episode →☘ Companion Pieces
What the DNA Reveals
Three weddings bound the Kenny and Connors families across two continents—but were they always one family? This companion turns from parish records to the DNA of living descendants, confirming a shared Connors ancestry from County Wexford to Prince Edward Island and narrowing a century-old question to a single missing generation.
Read Companion Piece →The 1850 Hickey Map
The Montgomery Estate on Lot 34. This cadastral survey recorded every tenant by parcel number—including Lawrence Kenny at No. 19 and Hugh Connors at No. 236. The earliest map documenting both families as neighbors, sixteen years before the weddings began.
Read Companion Piece →The 1863 Lake Map
A Cartographic Treasure of Prince Edward Island. The first commercial map to record property owners across the entire island—and the document that places "L. Kenny" and "H. Connors" as neighbors on Lot 34 before three weddings united them.
Read Companion Piece →Covehead and Avonlea
How did real life for Irish tenant farmers on Lot 34 compare to the fictional world of Lucy Maud Montgomery's beloved novels? Your ancestors lived in the real Avonlea—this companion piece explores what they shared with Anne Shirley's world, and what Montgomery left out.
Read Companion Piece →Researching Prince Edward Island
A comprehensive guide to PEI genealogy: maps, repositories, and strategies for tracing Irish families in Atlantic Canada. Developed from the methodology used to research the Kenny-Connors families.
Read Research Guide →☘ Free Download: PEI Genealogy Quick Reference Guide
Get the printable 4-page guide with repositories, maps, search tips, and checklists—the same methodology used to research the Kenny-Connors families. Keep it at your desk while you research.
Get Your Free Guide☘ Related Series
About This Research
The Kenny-Connors Documentary Biography Series reconstructs the lives of two Irish immigrant families using primary source documents: baptism records, marriage registers, census returns, land conveyances, probate files, newspaper obituaries, and family papers preserved by descendants.
This research builds on the extraordinary work of Mary Ellen Molony Brady (1928–2022), who conducted systematic genealogical research, interviewing elderly relatives and compiling family group sheets that would otherwise have been lost. Her dedication to preserving family history made this series possible.
Questions or additions to the family history? Contact Storyline Genealogy.
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