Personal Life
Kedzie married twice. In July 1850, he married Mary Elizabeth Austin of Greene County, New York but she died July 16, 1854. Three years later he married Mary Elizabeth of Chicago and they became the parents of five children.
He espoused the cause of the abolitionist party, and met with five or six others in the first meetings held to organize the Republican Party in Illinois.
He was president of the Illinois Saint Andrew Society in 1854.
Kedzie and his partner Luther Greenleaf were benefactors to the city of Evanston, helping to found the Evanston Free Public Library in 1873, and Kedzie served as the first president of the library board. Luther Greenleaf was an early trustee and benefactor of the newly founded Northwestern University in Evanston. Greenleaf is remembered for purchasing the library of Johannes Schulze, a collection of 20,000 volumes of German and Classical writings, for the University’s library.
In later years Kedzie served in the Illinois House of Representatives.
Kedzie died April 9, 1903 at the age of 87. He was interred in Rosehill Cemetery, in Chicago, near the neighborhood he helped create.
Read more about this topic: John H. Kedzie
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