Robert Kennicott (1835 – 1866)
	
Robert Kennicott was not well as a child and was schooled at home in Illinois. At age seventeen, he studied natural history under J.P. Kirkland at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. At age eighteen he took a month-long study trip that included the Red River in British North America.((Rosemary Neering, //Continental Dash, The Russian-American Telegraph.// Ganges, B.C.: Horsdal & Schubart, 1989: 102-03, 174-75.)) At age twenty, he was an expert on snake and animal adaptations to different environments.((Kenneth S. Coates, “The Kennicott Network: Robert Kennicott and the Far Northwest.” Yukon Historical and Museums Association, Proceedings number 2, 1984, 27-31.)) He spent a year at the Smithsonian Institute.((Rosemary Neering, //Continental Dash, The Russian-American Telegraph.// Ganges, B.C.: Horsdal & Schubart, 1989: 102-03, 174-75.))
	
In 1859, Kennicott agreed to an extended zoological expedition to the then unknown American sub-arctic. He was supported by Sir George Simpson and accompanied the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) brigade from Red River (Winnipeg) to Fort Resolution in the summer of 1860. He collected specimens and sent them to southern repositories. In August 1860 he travelled as far as Fort Yukon and stayed there for the winter. He remained in the area for more than a year as a guest of the HBC and travelled along the company’s trade route to Peel River Post (Fort McPherson). He learned of his father’s illness in 1862 and returned to Chicago.((Kenneth S. Coates, “The Kennicott Network: Robert Kennicott and the Far Northwest.” Yukon Historical and Museums Association, Proceedings number 2, 1984, 27-31.)) HBC men continued to send specimens to the Smithsonian for ten years after this trip.((Rosemary Neering, //Continental Dash, The Russian-American Telegraph.// Ganges, B.C.: Horsdal & Schubart, 1989: 102-03, 174-75.)) Kennitcott and the collecting he did substantially added to the richness of the Smithsonian collection.((Kenneth S. Coates, “The Kennicott Network: Robert Kennicott and the Far Northwest.” Yukon Historical and Museums Association, Proceedings number 2, 1984, 27-31.))
	
In 1864, Kennicott was working for the Academy of Science Museum in Chicago.((Rosemary Neering, //Continental Dash, The Russian-American Telegraph.// Ganges, B.C.: Horsdal & Schubart, 1989: 102-03, 174-75.)) He took an opportunity to return north as Chief of Explorations for the Collins Overland Telegraph survey. It was a project to link North America and Europe vis a trans-Siberian route.((Kenneth S. Coates, “The Kennicott Network: Robert Kennicott and the Far Northwest.” Yukon Historical and Museums Association, Proceedings number 2, 1984, 27-31.)) As a condition of his employment, he was able to hire six scientists and a volunteer assistant to collect specimens enroute. The group was called the Scientific Corps of the expedition.((Rosemary Neering, //Continental Dash, The Russian-American Telegraph.// Ganges, B.C.: Horsdal & Schubart, 1989: 102-03, 174-75.)) Kennicott led a party on the Alaska-Yukon section of the line. He arrived in St. Michael in 1865 and split his force into two. One was to string wire to Nulato across the Seward Peninsula to the strait. The other was to follow the Yukon River to the head and meet the line coming from British Columbia.((Ted Stone. //Alaska & Yukon History along the Highway.// Red Deer:  Red Deer College Press, 1997: 128.)) Kennicott died on the expedition in 1866, possibly by his own hand, of strychnine poisoning.((Rosemary Neering, //Continental Dash, The Russian-American Telegraph.// Ganges, B.C.: Horsdal & Schubart, 1989: 102-03, 174-75.))