The Lost Monnett:
Emma AuRilla Monnett Kennedy
Of Abraham and Catherine Monnett’s fifty grandchildren, one granddaughter was conspicuously absent from the family and its gatherings during her entire life. Her exile from the family was partially due to her father’s actions, and partially because her mother wished to raise the girl away from the glare of any stigma attached to being from a broken home.
Emma AuRilla Monnett was born to Isabel Miller Monnett four months after her father, John Thomas Monnett, the fourth born to Abraham and Catherine Monnett, walked out her mother. Isabel returned to her parents home to wait out the birth of her child.
The early facts of the relationship between Isabel Miller and John Thomas Monnett are not documented but their was evidently an attraction that led to the marriage. What is known about the relationship was outlined in Isabel's 1865 divorce pleading against John Thomas. The couple wed on May 13, 1862, and within several days of the wedding, John Thomas walked out on his wife, returning for several short visits before the birth of Emma on August 12, 1862. John Thomas then paid at least one, but not more than two more visits before he left Ohio. Isabel charged that John Thomas had taken up Minerva Harvey and was living with Harvey in a "state of adultery." By December 1862, John T. Monnett and Minerva Harvey had left Marion County for Illinois. Whether they left of their own accord or were sent by members of the family is unclear, however once they arrived in Illinois, the couple lived as common law "man and wife".
By February 1865, Isabel’s waiting period was over and she filed for divorce on the grounds of abandonment and on the grounds of adultery, naming Minerva Harvey as a co-defendant. Because of his common law status with Minerva Harvey, John Thomas could not return to Ohio to defend himself. Another complication was John and Minerva’s son Byron (a.k.a. “Al”), born in December 1864. When the final decree was handed down, Isabel was divorced from John Thomas, and received a healthy sum of money. She was also able to block any contact between Emma and her father. However Emma remained a Monnett due to her father's position in a family of means and his probability of inheriting a large sum of money in the future.
The final decree also freed John Thomas and Minerva from their self imposed exile, and they returned to Ohio where a Justice of the Peace promptly, and quietly, wed the couple. One can only imagine the tension in his parent’s house – it was quite a scandal for the community’s wealthiest farmer to have a son who had ruined one young lady’s life while carrying on with another.
Isabel did remarry, her second husband was Nelson Levi Myers. Raised by her mother and her stepfather, Emma wed Thomas (a.k.a. Tommy) Elsworth Kennedy in 1881. Kennedy was from Kirkpatrick, Ohio where his family farmed land proximate to Monnett holdings. He was a friend of Al Monnett, Emma’s half brother, both sharing the same middle name of "Elsworth". Tommy Kennedy was also a cousin by marriage of Emma’s; his mother Martha Walton was the elder sister of Anna Dorothea Walton, who was for a time the wife of John Thomas Monnett’s younger brother Augustus Eddy Monnett. It bears noting that the Walton family was also related to the second wife of Abraham Monnett (Emma's paternal grandfather), Jane Ludwig, whose first husband Henry D.H. Johnston's mother was Martha Walton, sister to David Walton who was the father of Martha Walton Kennedy and Dorothea Walton Monnett.
Emma and Tommy Kennedy had four children, Lora, Charles Francis, Oregon, and Martha Belle. Lora, born in Crawford County (but whose birth was registered in Marion County) died before her first birthday from spinal deformation. There are no records of Oregon beyond his 14 year. Charles Francis Kennedy became a railroad engineer for the Baltimore & Ohio and Pennsylvania Railroads. Belle spent her life by her mother's side and never married. Tommy Kennedy quit farming by the 1890’s and went to work for the Huber Corporation as a carpenter. The family moved from Kirkpatrick to the near north end of Marion, first on East George Street, then to Bellevue Avenue where their home abutted the old Marion burial grounds.
John Thomas Monnett’s wealth failed him as did his farms and his banking ventures. His relationship with his siblings grew increasingly strained as they grew tired of his constant financial and personal troubles. His marriage to Minerva also failed; by 1900 she left their home for their daughter Eva's home where she lived until her death. While they never divorced, they never lived together as man and wife again. Minerva died in 1909, and John Thomas in 1910. In his will, he left what little he had in the world to his three surviving children, Byron, Eva and Lola, but made no mention of Emma. Emma's name however does appear on later court documents, when her signature as a natural heir of John Thomas was needed in order to release claims against the estate prior to a sheriff's sale of assets.
Sometime before 1910, Thomas, Emma and Belle Kennedy left Marion County Ohio for the city of Peabody, in Marion County Kansas. Why is unclear, as is what followed. By 1918, Tommy Kennedy had returned to Marion, Ohio and Emma and Belle had moved on to Wichita, Kansas where they lived for the remainder of their lives. Thomas Elsworth Kennedy died in 1919 in Wellsville Ohio (at the home of his son Charles Francis) without his wife by his side. He was buried in Kirkpatrick Cemetery next to his infant daughter Lora's grave. Emma AuRilla Monnett Kennedy died in Wichita Kansas in 1953, and was buried in Caledonia, Ohio.
During her life, Emma did not openly discuss her relationship with her family members, nor did descendents of John Thomas Monnett. John Thomas may have attempted to make amends with his daughter prior to his death. There is evidence to suggest that in early 1910, John Thomas may provided Emma with the means by which she "bank rolled" the move to Kansas.
Documenting the connection between Emma and the family was a twenty year process, begun after a notation in the Monnet Family Genealogy raised a red flag in 1981. Orra Monnett recorded the marriage of Isabel Miller and John Thomas Monnett (and the birth of Emma) in the genealogical section of the book, and provided the reference to the marriage license in the courthouse section. Emma's notation indicated that she had wed "Elsworth" Kennedy, as it was recorded at the court house in Marion County Ohio. However, this appears to be the only use of his middle name as his Christian name. Once it was confirmed that Kennedy's first name was "Thomas", document confirmation, census listings, work in Wichita Kansas allowed contact with the only living descendent of Emma AuRilla Monnett Kennedy to be made. It is interesting to note that 140 years after her birth, Emma and her family were given what they deserved - a welcome to the family and an apology for the actions of John Thomas Monnett.
Her father’s rash and callous actions robbed Emma of her birthright and her family and until recently, the veil of misinformation and non-information clouded the true nature of her relationship with the Monnett’s. Life should have been better for her. It is a shame that it wasn’t.
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Revised: August 27, 2002