boulder and wiser
Or, the story of David Kennison and what I think is one of the top five funniest rocks of all time.
Hello friends!
I hope you’re all doing as well as can be expected. Today’s newsletter is a reader submission from Amelia, who alerted me to a right-in-my-own-backyard dirtbag I’d never heard of before and now want to establish a citywide holiday in honor of. Friendly reminder that if you know of a dirtbag you think will catch my attention, you can always let me know in the comments, or email me at rapscallison@substack.com.
Chances are you haven’t heard of this joker either, so please enjoy the story of:
David Kennison, Arguably the Single Most Audacious Liar I Have Ever Encountered in My Historical Reading and When I Tell You That Is Saying Something You Can Trust I Mean It
Imagine: it’s 1848. You are an average Chicago citizen, wandering around the Windy City looking for a way to spend your afternoon. You hear that Mooney’s Chicago Museum has some interesting exhibits open, so you and your valet toodle over to take a look. (In this hypothetical scenario, you have a valet. Don’t worry about it.) But before you can even get to the first set of plaques, you are struck by a remarkable sight:
An old-as-fuck man sitting in the middle of the museum, yelling to anyone who will listen “I’m 112 years old and I was part of the Boston Tea Party, give me ten dollars!”
Reader, this is David Kennison.
Tea’s Company
I don’t know how familiar the whole world is with the Boston Tea Party, so an aside for non-US readers: the BTP is one of the sillier episodes in our history, in which a bunch of colonists dressed up as Native Americans, snuck onto a British ship, and chucked a bunch of tea in Boston Harbor to protest taxes. Every historical illustration of it is the goofiest, most Richard Scarry’s Busytown thing I’ve ever seen, and I could happily look at eight hundred of them.
Now, as far as unhinged claims about age and historical events go, I’m tough to impress. My great-great-aunt is genuinely 104 years old and thriving, and one time a very angry woman on the El told me she personally knew Winston Churchill and he was disappointed in me. But “participant in the Boston Tea Party” is one I admit I haven’t heard before.
It was one 19th-century Chicago had also not heard, because people ate this story up. Kennison posted advertisements in the paper asking friends and interested citizens to come visit him at the museum, where he would regale them with stories and generally hold forth for hours in what I refer to as “every grandpa’s dream.”
And—in a twist I’m fairly sure is not going to surprise you—he wound up this story slam with the reminder that his pension from the US government had run out, and if any dedicated patriots could spare him a few dollars, he would be eternally grateful.
From the Chicago Daily Journal, November 1848:
“It is a fact that Mr. Kennison is as old as he represents himself to be, and so needy withal, a soldier of the Revolution, we think patriotism is at a low ebb in Chicago if it will permit itself to be thus represented and hawked about the streets by the cents worth, as a show.
A subscription for the old man, if he is worthy, to render him comfortable for the remnant of his days, would be far more creditable to the community.”
I feel like the only way this could have been less convincing is if Kennison walked in with a flashing LED belt buckle that scrolled the word “GRIFT” across his crotch region. But perhaps people’s bullshit meters were calibrated differently in the 1800s, because the museum was packed to bursting on November 17, 1848, the date of Kennison’s “112th birthday.” And people brought their wallets.
Alternate Universe: Kicked in the Head by a Horse
(Editor’s Note: I wrote this subhead, then thought “I wonder if there are actually fanfics on AO3 with this tag.” My search turned up 13 results, the first of which is in the Backstreet Boys fandom. You can imagine what happened to the rest of my night from there.)
What stories did Kennison regale the crowd with on his eleventy-second birthday, you ask? I think it’s time for a classic Dirtbags Through the Ages narrative device: a bulleted list of some of the most unhinged shit you have ever read with your human eyeballs.
This motherfucker claimed that he grew up in New Hampshire and, at the age of 33, yeeted some tea into Boston Harbor, claiming “we cared no more for our lives than three straws.” This much we have established. But also:
He carried around a small jar of tea leaves from the VERY NIGHT IN QUESTION, which somehow stayed dry and undamaged for more than a century.
He formed a secret society called the Order of the Rattlesnake whose entire purpose was to go around the country telling people how cool the Boston Tea Party was.
As the Head of the Order of the Rattlesnake, he led re-enactments of the Boston Tea Party and inducted new people into his tea-throwing cosplay effort involving lots of troubling indigenous appropriation.
He charged—obviously—hefty dues for membership in this society, which he—obviously—collected himself.
It wasn’t all BTP-related, of course! The grift continued:
He personally witnessed American soldier Benedict Arnold and British soldier John André being hanged for being a Traitor Spy and a Sexy Spy (respectively).1
He was hanging out at the Battle of Yorktown when the British surrendered.
He was also a prisoner of war among the Mohawk tribe at the time of the Battle of Yorktown, which, don’t worry about it.
He used to carry George Washington’s mail.
If you’re noticing a real “Forrest Gump of the American Revolution” theme here, you’re right to.
After the Revolution, he got married four times, and all four wives died under mysterious circumstances.
He had four children by his first wife and 18 children by his second wife.2
After fighting in the War of 1812, he got hit by a tree and broke his skull open.
Also he got shot by a cannonball and kicked in the face by a horse (two separate occasions).
He went blind and deaf at age 80 but got his slight and hearing back at age 92. How? Again, don’t worry about it.
At the age of 111 he was still walking 20 miles a day and farmed 100 bushels of corn a season, but at 112 he was “starting to get tired.”
Of all of these wild statements, my favorite one is “I was kicked in the face by a horse,” because what value does that add to the grift? Like, we have photographic evidence of him:
This isn’t a Georges Danton situation. He doesn’t look like he got kicked in the face by a horse. Why would you even bring that up.
When I Was a Young Boy, My Father Took Me Into the City to See Two Dueling Marching Bands Commemorating a 115-Year-Old Man
Kennison remained a local celebrity for the next three entire years, until he passed away in February 1852. No cause of death was given, other than being 115 years old, which I guess would do it. Some newspapers reported his age as 117, because if you’re gonna make shit up just go for it.
I love many things about my city, and one of them is that Chicago isn’t a town to let an ancient colonial wizard be buried without honor. Kennison got a full funeral parade through the streets. Thousands of citizens came out. He had an honor guard. He got a 21-gun salute. He had not one but TWO military bands, though this seems to have been more of a scheduling issue than anything.
Then Kennison was buried in a posh cemetery in Lincoln Park, with plans to gather public money to erect a giant monument to the war hero in the next year or two. But the city never got around to it, I assume for two reasons:
No public works project in Chicago has ever gotten done on time (I say, gesturing at the State/Lake El station that’s going to be closed for renovation until my one-year-old nephew goes to college); and
Somebody thought about it for more than five seconds and woke up to the fact that this guy was full of absolute and complete horse shit.
Without the monument, no one actually knows where David Kennison is buried for real. But there is a boulder in Lincoln Park with a plaque on it that’s somewhere in the general area. I have to include the photo submitted by reader Amelia, because it made me laugh so hard and is the whole reason I decided to write up this story:
In case that’s hard to read, the plaque itself says:
“In memory of DAVID KENNISON, the last survivor of the “Boston Tea Party,” who died in Chicago, February 24, 1852, aged 115YRS, 6MOS, 17DA, and is buried near this spot. This stone is erected by the Sons of the Revolution, the Sons of the American Revolution, and the Daughters of the American Revolution.”
And the sign above it, which could really read “[CITATION NEEDED]”, says:
“The 1852 funeral for David Kennison was the most elaborate Chicago had ever seen. The City paid all expenses and donated 2 cemetery lots, intending to erect a monument on his grave. That never happened.
The legend of his exploits grew to unfeasible promotions. His Boston Tea Party fame, military achievements, and his claim to have lived to the age of 115 are disputed today. This boulder, installed 50 years after Kennison’s death, is likely two blocks north of his actual burial site in what was then the Chicago City Cemetery.”
In other words: the whole story is a lie, none of this is anything, we couldn’t be fucked to find the gravesite so we just got this rock and put it somewhere, but it’s funny enough that we’re leaving it, go enjoy the park. I love this, and I also love that the boulder itself is giving Plymouth Rock levels of “underwhelming national monument.” Probably David Kennison would have claimed to be on the Mayflower if he’d thought of it.
The [CITATION NEEDED] sign also links to the spectacular microsite I used as my primary source for this newsletter, written by an academic who is so fucking done with Kennison’s bullshit.
And that’s it. There’s no historical significance, point, or meaning to this story. There’s just an old weirdo who lied to an entire city and scammed them out of a two-military-band funeral for shits and giggles, and I am obsessed with him. Please pour one out for David Kennison, a True American Hero and Patriot.
If you’re near a harbor, pour it out there. I think he’d appreciate that.
All right, friends, that’s all for now! Until next time, be well, and see what historical event you think you can get away with claiming to have eyewitnessed, because the next time my job asks me to share a “fun fact” I’m going to say I was a member of the Lewis and Clark expedition,
-Allison
I’m always tempted to do a John André Dirtbags issue because I love him a great deal, except that his primary characteristics were being 1) hot, 2) dumb, and 3) that’s it. If you’d be interested in the story of a hot dummy who gets hanged for being hot and dumb, let me know.
This could have been the mysterious circumstance for Wife 2, to be fair.
I, myself, helped Buzz Aldrin down that last step...
So, in 1848 the Boston Tea Party was 75 years in the past and he could have just claimed to be a teenager at the time turning 90…nope, went straight for “I’m 112!”