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David Kennedy (singer)

Scottish minister and tenor singer

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionFeb 9, 2023
Entity authorityQ18195583 ↗
Source-derived summary

David Kennedy (1825–1886) was a Scottish church musician and concert giver.

Life

Born in Perth on 15 April 1825, he was son of a weaver who was also precentor of the United Secession Church there. At 16 he was apprenticed to a painter, while also being trained by his father in music, and in 1845 became precentor of the South Kirk, Perth. During 1848 he worked at his trade in Edinburgh and London, and returned to Perth to set up in business.

Kennedy then obtained a precentorship in Edinburgh, and in 1859 began there a series of weekly concerts. Short concert tours in Scotland followed in 1860 and 1861, and in 1862 he made his first appearance in London, at the Hanover Square Rooms. Between December 1862 and May 1863 he gave a hundred concerts in the Egyptian Hall; and in 1864 and 1865 he was again in London, singing and reading parts of Waverley.

In 1866–8 Kennedy made a professional tour through Canada and the eastern sections of the United States, with his eldest daughter as his accompanist. In 1869 he went to San Francisco, by way of the Isthmus of Panama. The First transcontinental railroad was opened while Kennedy was at San Francisco, and he sang The Star-Spangled Banner at the inaugural ceremony.

Editorial summary

“David Kennedy (singer)” enters the record as scottish minister and tenor singer. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what David, Kennedy and singer can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1825, 1886, 1845, 1848—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1825-01-01. Its strongest next move is a source search built around David, Kennedy and singer.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“David Kennedy (singer)” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, David, Kennedy and singer provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 9, 2023. The linked authority identifier is Q18195583. VIAF identifies the subject as 53758641. The Library of Congress control number is no97063039. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1825, 1886, 1845 and 1848.

Critical limits

Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “David Kennedy (singer)”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow David Kennedy (singer) primary sources, David Kennedy (singer) archive and David research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “David Kennedy (singer)”?
  2. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
  3. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “David Kennedy (singer)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.