In 1895 a brown-eyed young Hoosier came to Kansas to live with his great-
  uncle, D.L. Pierce, the first settler on Turkey Creek. Robert Louis Kennedy
  ("Bert") left his job on an ice wagon in Indianapolis after his mother's
  death. In Barber County Joe Massey and Homer Hoagland became good friends of
  his. Years later Bert loved telling his Odd Fellow friends about those early
  days.
     While riding along fences one day, Bert met fifteen-year-old Blanche Lott.
  She became the light of his life to his dying day. For brief periods Bert
  would return to Indianapolis while she grew up. At first she turned down his
  proposal because an evangelist had advised "Sister, dedicate that voice to
  God's service." and her vocal teacher also encouraged her. When Bert announced
  that he was returning to Indianapolis to stay, she shyly told him to ask her
  again. They set the date for March 23, 1902.
     On that date the whole Lott family was quarantined for smallpox. An old
  superstition that it was unlucky to change a wedding date influenced them to
  keep the day as planned, though only the preacher, the bridegroom, and his
  uncle and aunt were allowed into the Lott parlor for the ceremony. The Groom's
  younger brother, Ira, watched outside the window.
     In 1903 the Kennedys moved from a position of ranch hands to buyers of the
  960 acre farm where they had been married. Bert's father and brother soon came
  to live with them. To their three children - Ella, Lott and Fred - the Turkey
  Creek home became a dream place. They rode their horses, reached to the cherry
  trees arrayed along the drive to pick fruit for Mother's pies, climbed the
  apple trees towering nearby. Often they would race across the alfalfa field 
  to meet Papa coming home from town with three sacks of candy from Bissantz
  Store. The three in the buggy driving Old Bess to school became a familiar
  sight. Bert became vice-president of Sun State Bank. Baptist Church, school
  and family dinners provided social life.
     In 1918 both Ella and Lott were ready for high school; consequently, the
  family moved to Medicine Lodge. In 1920 the Kennedys moved to Guymon, where
  the two older children graduated, and then in 1926 to Liberal, where Fred
  graduated. They settled into a nineteenth-century home where Bert was to live
  to be ninety-five. His beloved Blanche died from multiple myeloma during the
  fifty-second wedding year. Lott died from a heart attach in 1967 after giving
  forty years to banking and community service in Liberal. Fred has retired 
  after many years with the Seward County Highway Department. His wife had died
  in 1961 and in 1974 he married a Sun City schoolmate, Gwendolyn Woods Baker.
  Ella did come back to Medicine Lodge to teach third grade for a couple of
  years before graduating from KU. She is now retired from teaching English in 
  Liberal but loves to come back to Barber County.
                 
     Source:Chosen Land - Barber County, Kansas,  pg. 257 
     Submitted by: Ella Blanche (Kennedy) Penny