Col. C. L. Kennan
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George Kennanwas born in Norwalk, Huron County, Ohio, February 16 1845. He was educated in the public schools of his native town, and in 1862 attended the Columbus Ohio, high school, while working at night as a telegraph operator. In 1864, he was assistant chief operator in the telegraphoffice in Cincinnati, and in December of the same year went to Kamchatka by way of Nicaraugua, California, and the North Pacific. As leader of one of the Russo-American telegraph company's exploring parties in northeastern Siberia in 18655-6, and as a superintendent of construction for the middle district of the Siberian division from 1866- 1868, he explored and located a route for the Russo-American telegraph line, between the Okhotsk sea and the Bering Strait, spending nearly three years in constant travel in the interior of northeastern Siberia, and returning to the United States on the abandonment of the enterprise in 1868. In 1870 he went to Russia to explore the mountains of the eastern Caucasus, proceeded down the Volga river to the Caspian sea, made extensive explorations on horseback in Daghestan and Chechnia, crossing the great range of the Caucasus three times in different places, and in 1871 returned to this country. In 1885-6 he made a journey of 15,000 miles through northern Russia and Siberia for the purpose of investigating the Russian exile system, visiting all the convict prisons and mines between the Ural mountains and the head waters of the Amoor river and explored the wildest part of the Russian Altai. Since his return from Russia he has become very famous as a lecturer and writer on what he saw upon his travels. |
