This photo, with original caption, accompanied Louisa Kennedy’s article in the February 1909 edition of Gleanings in Bee Culture. The man presumably is William Kennedy, brother of Louisa and Selinda Kennedy. Unfortunately, the women are not identified individually. (Gleanings in Bee Culture/The Online Books Page)
John A. (1808-92) and Elizabeth Kennedy (1812-92) moved with their six children from Pennsylvania in 1860 and took up farming in the Curran area. For some period of time, possibly beginning as soon as the Kennedys arrived in Sangamon County, the farm’s products included sizeable amounts of honey.
John Kennedy was knowledgeable enough about raising bees that he won prizes at the Sangamon County Fair in at least 1890 and 1891, and he was part of a panel discussion about beekeeping at the 1892 Sangamon County Farmers’ Institute.
That discussion took place only a couple of months before John Kennedy died in May 1892. He left his farm and all his other possessions to Elizabeth, but – perhaps because she also was infirm (Elizabeth died in November 1892) – Kennedy made his oldest daughters, Louisa (1838-1915) and Selinda (1845-1926), co-executrixes of his estate.
Louisa and Selinda also took on responsibility for the family’s beehives, eventually with the help of their brother William (1856-1932). (Louisa lived on the family farm her entire life. William and Selinda also lived there until their last few years, when they both moved in with the family of another sister, Mary Kennedy Ingels (1852-1935), in Springfield.)
The Kennedys presumably were regular readers of Gleanings in Bee Culture, a monthly magazine created by A.I. Root in 1873 to connect beekeepers around the country and answer questions about raising bees. Much of Gleanings’ content was reader-contributed, and in February 1909, Louisa Kennedy became one of those correspondents.
Gleanings published the photo above in conjunction with her article, which was headlined “Bee Keeping for Women: A Good Record from an Apiary Managed by Two Ladies”
The full text of Louisa Kennedy’s contribution to Gleanings in Bee Culture not only describes the ups and downs of raising bees, it also highlights the Kennedys’ amazingly precise bookkeeping.
Here is what she wrote:
After our father was taken from us, sixteen years ago, my sister and I carried on the apiary. That was the spring when everybody lost nearly all his bees. We lost all but eighteen queens with a mere handful of bees for each – perhaps not more than a pint of bees to the queen.
We fed and built them up and then divided them until we had 35 good colonies. That would have been a pretty good honey year if we had only had the bees to gather it. As it was, we sold about $102 worth of honey.
Since then we have had some pretty good honey years, and a good many very poor ones. The poorest year we sold only $31 worth of honey; the best $578 worth.
The greatest number of colonies we ever had at any one time was 93; the fewest, 18. During the sixteen years we have received for honey sold, $3,496.00. During this time our expense for the apiary has been $576.66. Upon the whole I think that is not so bad for two women, pretty well along in years, to do.
During the last few years we have had our brother to help us with the heaviest of the work, such as taking off honey (we have always worked for comb honey), fixing up the bees for the winter, etc.
This present year the fore part of the season was so wet and cold the bees could not work. When it did become dry and warm they tried to make up for lost time. We got about 3,000 sections of honey and about 600 more this fall. We had 60 colonies, spring count, and we now have 72 good strong ones in winter quarters.
Curran, Illinois
Gleanings in Bee Culture, retitled simply Bee Culture, was still being published in 2025. Founding publisher A.I. Root (1839-1923), whose prime interest was producing beeswax for candles, is known as “the father of modern beekeeping.” In addition to editing Gleanings, he wrote an encyclopedia of beekeeping, The ABC and XYZ of Bee Culture (1879), which is now in its 42nd edition.
Root also wrote the only published eyewitness accounts of some of the Wright Brothers’ early test flights near Dayton, Ohio (though he was not at the brothers’ first successful flight at Kitty Hawk, N.C.), and he was a friend of disability rights advocate Helen Keller.
Root Candles, which A.I. Root founded, is still family owned and still produces beeswax candles. The company boasts it makes “The Best Candles in America, Made in America since 1869.”
Hat tip: To Ohio Queen Bee Nina Bagley of Bee Culture magazine, whose inquiry brought the Kennedys to SangamonLink’s attention.
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