His early life was passed in the country; he had good common school advantages, and he studied at the Camden academy; but his father's means were not sufficient to permit him a more advanced course of study at college.

At seventeen he obtained a clerkship in one of the large dry goods houses at Charleston, and he continued in the employ of that house until the outbreak of the War between the States. Enlisting promptly in the Confederate army, he served in the Rutledge Mounted Rifles, and later in Captain Z. Davis's company from Charleston, South Carolina. After the war he became a merchant, and incidentally a planter, settling at Indiantown, Williamsburg county. Prospering in his business, he purchased a valuable plantation which he worked in such a way as to give him wide influence among the farmers and planters of his section.

In the gloomy days of 1876 Mr. Kennedy was elected captain of a large company which was organized near where he lived; and that company rendered valuable service in the threatening months of political and social disturbances in that year.

On the 10th of November, 1867, Captain Kennedy married Miss Julia Everet Scott, daughter of John E. and Mary Macrea (Gordon) Scott, of Williamsburg. She was a graduate of a woman's college; and they have had six children, all daughters, who are also graduates of women's colleges. Three of their daughters were living in 1907.

Captain Kennedy is connected with the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. In political convictions he is a Democrat, and he adds: "I was a strong and uncompromising 'straight-out' in 1876; chairman of the Williamsburg county delegation to the convention which nominated Wade Hampton, and a charter member of the Democratic party of my county; for thirty-six years a member, and often chairman, of the Democratic executive committee for the county." He was mayor of Kingstree for one term. He is an extensive land-owner, possessed of about three thousand acres. In 1892 and 1893 Captain Kennedy was elected to the legislature; declining to run again, although his constituents earnestly desired him to continue to represent them. He is an aide-de-camp on General Zimmerman Davis's staff, United Confederate veterans.

Captain Kennedy has found travel to the mountains or to the sea for a month or two in the summer the form of relaxation and change which has enabled him to do effective work.

To the young men of South Carolina he commends as the key to success, "thrift, industry, promptness, and absolute sobriety."

Portrait and Signature of William Henry Kennedy

Hemphill, J.C., ed. Men of Mark in South Carolina. Washington, D.C.: Men of Mark Publishing Company, 1908.