Kennedy brothers ‘moved mountains’

This old newspaper image from the St. Louis Post Dispatch of Sunday, June 23, 1901, shows the Kennedy Brothers steam shovel moving dirt while lowering the Macon City grade for the Burlington line across Missouri. The photo was taken at the Rutherford Street trestle in Macon, Mo. newspapers.com

MARY LOU MONTGOMERY

The Kennedy brothers: Jack, Dan, Will and Ed, hailed from Hannibal, and at the start of the 20th Century, they had the reputation throughout the Midwest as top steam shovel operators.

In June 1900, they were hired to help build a road for the Union Pacific near Laramie, Wyo., at the Sherman hill cutoff. In the fall of 1899, a decision had been made by UP officials to tunnel Sherman mountain, in order to obtain a grade of not more than 43 feet to the mile. The tunnel, through the southwest side of the hill, would be 1,800 feet long and 18 feet tall, and wide enough for a double track.

Kilpatrick Bros. & Collins of Lincoln, Neb., was among the contractors who won bids on the project, and they, in turn, subcontracted some of the work out to the Kennedy Brothers of Hannibal. The Hannibal firm was to remove 500,000 to 1,000,000 cubic yards of dirt and rock.

The project also consisted of building a grade 40 miles long; and constructing a rock causeway over Dale Creek, which included a steel bridge 140 feet in height and more than 300 feet long. 

(Construction details from The Daily Boomerang, Jan. 2, 1901, Wyoming Digital Newspaper Collection.)

Brothers Dan and Ed Kennedy returned from Wyoming to Hannibal in June 1900, preparing to take two big steam shovels back with them. In all, the Hannibal-based company had eight shovels ready to be put to work, according to the Daily Boomerang of May 9, 1900.

Ed Kennedy told the Wyoming newspaper that he worked in the vicinity of Laramie with a steam shovel when the Union Pacific was built across the Laramie plains in 1868-1869.

Back in Missouri

On June 23, 1901, the St. Louis Post Dispatch published an in-depth story about another railroad project involving the Kennedy brothers.

The original rail line to cross Missouri was built upon a rock ridge that was called “the backbone of the state.”

“The charter of the old North Missouri railroad, which was organized in 1853, provided for the location of a railroad line along the ridge dividing the waters of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers, or as near as may be.

“People whirling through north Missouri over the backbone of the state, hardly notice any undue elevation. But the managers of the Hannibal and St. Joseph, now a highly important arm of the Burlington, appreciate the magnitude of this obstacle of nature.”

The Post Dispatch offered a visual to help readers understand the grade of the route. 

“If there’s snow on the ground and you’ve got a bob sled, you could place it on the peak of the hill, just opposite the old passenger depot (in Macon), and coast four miles west before you struck level ground.  Pointing your sled in the other direction it would have to go two miles to reach the level. The track running up this grade in some places is 105.6 feet to the mile. The standard grade of railroads is 33 feet elevation to the mile.”

When the decision was made to reduce the grade in 1901, the Post Dispatch reported:

“To cut through this hill requires the removal of 300,000 yards of hard earth, much of it so compact as to nearly fall within the classification of loose rock. It is taken down tier by tier by two master steam shovels, one weighing 55 and the other 65 tons.

“The depth of the excavation through (Macon) will be 30 feet at the deepest point and a uniform width of 100 feet. Trains will be out of sight from the town and passengers will only see the depots and long stone walls, surmounted by iron fences. At each street crossing will be an iron viaduct and all possibility of grade crossing accidents, the terror of railroad men, obviated.”

Will Kennedy, the second to the youngest of the Kennedy brothers, was superintendent of Shovel No. 3 on this project.

One unusual incident occurred during Will Kennedy’s work on the project.

“Shovel No. 3 caught a queer load one day while eating its way through ‘Goose Hill’ in the western suburbs. Among the crowd of spectators on the bank, just east of the shovel,” was a mother and two of her young children. “The bank over which the latter were peering suddenly gave way and, as the great shovel rose like a sea monster from the deep, the kids fell into it and were immediately covered by a couple of yards of fertile Missouri soil.” The children’s mother started to scream.  The yell “loosened the guys on Nov. 3’s smoke stack and curdled all the milk for miles around. (The engineer) shifted his cob pipe to the other side and ‘let her have it.’ The only way to save the urchins was to dump the load as quick as possible, and inside of 15 seconds they were sprawling amid the dirt in the dump car, screaming like wild cats, but entirely unhurt.”

An interesting side note the newspaper offered was the pay scale for the workers:

“A uniform rate of $1.35 a day is paid laborers.

“Locomotive engineers get $100 a month.

“Engineers on the steam shovels, $150 a month.

“The expense of living here is from $3 to $4 a week.

“Many of the laborers have their families with them and ‘keep house’ in the hillside tents. At present there are nearly 500 men on the work.”

The Kennedy brothers were sons of Cornelius and Ellen O’Neil Kennedy of Hannibal, who lived for most of the years of their Hannibal residency at what is now numbered 1506 Broadway.

Jack, Dan, Will and Ed

Jack: John W. Kennedy, born 1847. In 1910 he was a contractor living in Chicago. He was married to Katherine Crawford Kennedy (1854-1937). Mrs. Kennedy moved to Coconut Grove, Fla., in 1922, to live near her daughters, Mrs. John F. Warwick and Mrs. F.F. Glomb.

Dan: Daniel Joseph Kennedy (1852-1932) was a railway engineer, who died in 1932 at Indianapolis, Marion County, Ind. He retired circa 1922. He was single.

Will: William Oscar Kennedy, born in 1868, died Aug. 31, 1932, at Beech Grove, Marion County, Ind. He continued working as a steam shovel engineer until circa 1927. He was survived by his wife, Catherine.

Ed: George Edward Kennedy:  (1868-1930) In 1889, Ed Kennedy was injured in a train accident near Ferguson Station, St. Louis. Kennedy was engineer on the steam shovel at the time of its collision with engine No. 1310 of a work train. He had both legs broken, in addition to additional injuries. In 1901, Ed Kennedy had a job working on a steam shovel for the Katy Railroad at McAllister, I.T. In 1904, he was in charge of the operation of a steam shovel in the vicinity of Troy, Mo.  In 1910, Ed Kennedy had been married to Henrietta Schmahl Kennedy, 31, for 19 years. She had given birth to a number of children, with only one surviving. That son, Edgar, died in 1912, at the age of 15. He was hit by an automobile while riding his bicycle in Denver, Colo. He was brought back to Hannibal for burial in Mount Olivet Cemetery. Father, son, and an unnamed infant are buried in Section 6, Lot 116.

Wikipedia notes that steam shovels were replaced by simpler and cheaper diesel-powered excavating shovels in the 1930s.

Mary Lou Montgomery retired as editor of the Hannibal (Mo.) Courier-Post in 2014. She researches and writes narrative-style stories about the people who served as building blocks for this region’s foundation. Books available on Amazon.com by this author include but are not limited to: "The Notorious Madam Shaw," "Pioneers in Medicine from Northeast Missouri," "The Historic Murphy House, Hannibal, Mo., Circa 1870,” “Hannibal’s ‘West End,’ and the newest book, “Oakwood: West of Hannibal.” Montgomery can be reached at Montgomery.editor@yahoo.com Her collective works can be found at www.maryloumontgomery.com

This old newspaper image from the St. Louis Post Dispatch of Sunday, June 23, 1901, shows the Kennedy Brothers steam shovel moving dirt while lowering the Macon City grade for the Burlington line across Missouri. The photo was taken on the South Side of Weed Street. newspapers.com

A derelict steam shovel in Alaska. Major components visible include the steam boiler, water tank, winch, main engine, boom, dipper stick, crowd engine, wheels and excavator. wikipedia