Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 1.djvu/265

 THE

��GKANITE MONTHLY.

��A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, HISTORY AND STATE PROGRESS.

��VOL. 1.

��FEBRUARY, 1878.

��NO. 9.

��HON. FBANK A. MCKEAN.

��In the first number of the Granite Monthly we gave a sketch and portrait of Gov. Benjamin F. Prescott, who has since been nominated by the Repub- lican party for re-election to the guber- natorial office. In accordance with the suggestion of many of our patrons, and as most appropriate at this time, we pre- sent our readers in this number with a biographical sketch and accompanying portrait of the Hon. Frank A. McKean of Nashua, who received the nomination of the recent Democratic State Conven- tion for Governor.

Mr. McKean's paternal ancestry was of the staunch old Scotch-Irish stock which settled in the north of Ireland more than two hundred and fifty years ago, and from whose midst, in the fall of 1718, there came over to this country a colony of emigrants, who in the follow- ing year located in the region then called " Nutfield," subsequently called London- derry, from Londonderry, Ireland, the town from which most of the colonists had come, and in whose memorable de- fence against the forces of King James II. some of them had participated. James McKeen (the uame was originally spelled McKeen, and is to the present time by most branches of the family), of whom the subject of our sketch is a direct de- scendant of the sixth generation, was a determined supporter of the Protestant cause, and took an active part in the defence of Londonderry. He had three sons, James, John and William. James

��and John joined the company which pre- pared to emigrate to America, but John, * who was the ancestor of Frank A, Mc- Kean, died before the embarkation, yet his widow and four children (three sons and a daughter) with his brother James and his family, including his son-in-law, James Nesmith (great-grandfather of Hon. George W. Nesmith of Franklin), came over with the colony. James Mc- Keen was a prominent member of the colony and became a leading citizen of the new town of Londonderry, being the first commissioned Justice of the Peace in the town, and prominent in the man- agement of public affairs. He had a large family of children, his son John marrying Mary, the daughter of his brother John, and among their children was Rev. Joseph McKeen, d. d., first President of Bowdoin College.

The three sons of John McKeen, above mentioned, who came over with their widowed mother, were James, Rob- ert and Samuel. The latter subsequent- ly settled in the town of Amherst. He reared a family of ten children, six sons and four daughters. Three of the sons were soldiers in the French and In- dian war, and all lost their lives at the hands of the Indians, one at the capture of Ft. William Henry, and another, Rob- ert, at the battle of Wyoming. The lat- ter was the grandfather of Hon. Samuel McKeen, Senator in Congress from the State of Pennsylvania. His sixth son, William, who settled in Deering, also

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