Anchorage 1910 - 1940 Legends & Legacies

Kennedy, Daniel O'Connell, Jr.

1881-1944 | Businessman and Territorial Legislator

Daniel O'Connell Kennedy Jr. was an Anchorage merchant who owned and operated, with his brother and business partner, James, Kennedy's clothing store on Fourth Avenue in downtown Anchorage.  Their clothing business was in continual operation from about 1921 until it was sold in 1942.  After 1934, the name of the business was changed to Hub Clothing.

The Kennedy Family and Daniel O'Connell Kennedy Sr.

According to the 1900 U.S. Census, Daniel O’Connell Kennedy Sr. arrived in the United States in 1851; a brief biography of Kennedy by historian Robert DeArmond has the elder Kennedy jumping ship in Philadelphia as early as 1843. Beginning in 1853, he prospected with indifferent success in California; Kootenai, British Columbia; Oregon; Idaho; and Washington. When Cassiar, British Columbia was struck in 1874, he joined the stampede.¹

In 1876 Daniel Kennedy Sr. moved to Sitka, where he remained until 1880. The U.S. Navy’s 1880 census of Sitka records Kennedy’s occupation as that of miner. While in Sitka, on November 12, 1878, he married Ekaterina (later referred to as Katrina and Katherine) Kvasnikov, born on the Kenai Peninsula in Ninilchik, Alaska, on May 17, 1853, the daughter of a Russian missionary who was sent to Alaska from Moscow. In 1880, he was one of the first prospectors to land at Juneau seeking gold.²

In 1883 Daniel Kennedy Sr. became night watchman and fire warden in Juneau, initially being compensated by a subscription raised voluntarily by the citizens. In 1902 the Kennedys moved to Kachemak Bay to homestead and work coal claims. In late summer 1904 the family returned to Juneau and he was again hired as night watchman. He then served the City of Juneau continuously until 1911 when he was retired with half pay.

Daniel Kennedy Sr., was familiarly called “Uncle Dan,” and according to an article about him during his final illness in the January 7, 1913 Alaska Daily Empire, he was “one of the best known and most beloved of the old pioneers settling in Juneau.”³ On January 30, 1913 the Alaska Daily Empire reported on Daniel O’Connell Kennedy Sr.’s., funeral, stating that the “[18]87 Pioneers who were in town attended as a body.”⁴ The ‘87 Pioneers was a local organization, composed of people who lived in Juneau by 1887.

Daniel O'Connell Kennedy Jr.

Daniel O'Connell Kennedy Jr. was born in Sitka, Alaska on June 10, 1881, to Daniel O’Connell Kennedy Sr. and Ekaterina (Katherine) Kvasnikoff Kennedy.  He moved with his parents to live in the gold rush town of Juneau within months of his birth.  He was one of five brothers born to Daniel O. Kennedy Sr., and Ekaterina Kvasnikov Kennedy. He grew up in Juneau except for the two year period when the family moved to Kachemak Bay to homestead and to prospect for coal claims. The 1900 U.S. Census, taken when he was eighteen and living with his parents in Juneau, lists his profession as a printer. The 1910 U.S. Census shows him continuing to live in Juneau in his parents’ home with his occupation listed as miner.⁵ He is also listed as a miner in three city directories for Juneau dated 1903, 1909-1910 and 1911-1912. His funeral announcement in the Anchorage Daily Times stated that when he was a miner “ . . . he once won an Independence Day rock drilling contest at Juneau.”⁶ His World War I draft registration card, dated October 5, 1918, shows him working as a fisherman for his younger brother, George, in Skagway.⁷ By 1921, he and his brother James were in the clothing business together in Anchorage, although some sources indicate the partnership began as early as 1919.

According to Evangeline Atwood and Robert DeArmond, in Who's Who in Alaskan Politics: A Biographical Dictionary of Alaskan Political Personalities, 1884-1974, Daniel O’Connell Kennedy Jr. was a pack train freighter who operated between Fairbanks and Valdez along the Valdez Trail from 1904-1916. In addition, Atwood and DeArmond state that he operated pack trains and camps for tourists at Mount McKinley National Park (now Denali National Park and Preserve) from 1923 to 1925. Later, more definitive accounts by National Park Service historians William E. Brown (A History of Denali-Mount McKinley Region, Alaska, 1991) and Frank Norris (Crown Jewel of the North: An Administrative History of Denali National Park and Preserve, Volume 1, 2006), appear to discount this assertion. Together, Brown and Norris refer to another Kennedy, Dan T. Kennedy, a horse packer, game guide, and park concessioner from Nenana who owned a five-acre inholding surrounding McKinley Station until 1961.⁸   

On October, 28, 1921, Daniel Kennedy Jr. married Mrs. Anna Maloney Sturgis in Anchorage. She was born in England on August 13, 1884 and died in June 1930. Anna Kennedy was active in the Anchorage chapter of the Women of Moose Heart Legion and in Pioneers of Alaska Auxiliary 4. Business was apparently good enough that the couple indulged in an ocean voyage from the “Pacific Coast” of the United States, beginning on January 18, 1932 and landing in New York on February 1, 1932.⁹

Like his brother James, Daniel Jr. was a hunter. In 1928 he accompanied Catholic priest George Woodley, his brother and pilot Art Woodley, and their father on a mountain sheep hunt in the Talkeetna Mountains. Father Woodley was accidentally killed when he fell down a steep slope during the hunt.

In 1933, three years after his first wife's death, Daniel Kennedy Jr. married Gertrude M. Watson, the daughter of Charles and Grace Watson, also original Anchorage and Alaska pioneers. Charles Watson was a former United States Deputy Marshal and assistant chief of police for Anchorage and had worked as a teamster for the Alaska Railroad. Grace Watson Kennedy had worked in Anchorage as a telephone operator and was also a schoolteacher who had taught in various communities along the Alaska Railroad line, including Nenana. She was born in Whitehorse in the Yukon Territory, Canada, in 1903.¹⁰

After the death of his brother and business partner James, Daniel O’Connell Kennedy Jr. moved their men’s clothing business across Fourth Avenue where the store’s name was eventually changed to Hub Clothing. He continued to operate the store until 1942 when he sold it.

Between 1937 and 1939 Daniel O’Connell Kennedy Jr. served in the Alaska Territorial Legislature in Juneau as a Democrat. According to his obituary in the Anchorage Daily Times, he died after a long illness on July 8, 1944 while visiting Circle Hot Springs, Alaska. Gertrude Kennedy died in 1953 in Anchorage. They had no children and both were buried in the Catholic Tract of the Anchorage Memorial Park Cemetery.¹¹

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A view of Daniel O'Connell Kennedy Jr.'s post-1934 clothing store, located on the south side of Fourth Avenue, several doors west of the hardware store owned by his brother George.

B1989.016.1509.8, Lu Liston Collection, Atwood Resource Center, Anchorage Museum at Rasmuson Center, Anchorage, AK.

A view of Kennedy’s clothing store with patriotic decorations, possibly to celebrate Washington and Lincoln’s birthday or the 4th of July. The photograph was taken some time after James Kennedy’s death in 1934, after his brother and partner Daniel moved the store across 4th Avenue to this location.

B1989_016_1588_2, Lu Liston Collection, Atwood Resource Center, Anchorage Museum at Rasmuson Center, Anchorage, AK.

A view facing east on Fourth Avenue in Anchorage before 1934. On the left side of the photograph is a sign for Kennedy’s Clothing, which was run by brothers Daniel and James Kennedy. After the death of James in 1934, brother and partner Daniel moved the store across Fourth Avenue.

1965_002_10, CIHS Bowden-Liston Collection, Atwood Resource Center, Anchorage Museum at Rasmuson Center, Anchorage, AK.

Daniel O. Kennedy Jr. at a Shriner’s picnic in the Anchorage area, possibly Lake Spenard, in the mid 1930s. Organizations like the Shriners, the Elks, the American Legion, Rotary, and the Pioneers of Alaska provided social activities and community service in small towns like Anchorage, and were a link to life in the rest of the United States.

Courtesy of Wells Fargo Heritage Museum and Library, Anchorage, AK.

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