Sara Beaumont Kennedy

Cannon was born in Somerville, Tennessee, the daughter of Robert Hines Cannon and Nora Devereux Cannon. Her parents were both from North Carolina; her father was a doctor, and her mother was a teacher.[1] One of her aunts was writer Mary Bayard Devereux Clarke.[2] She counted among her ancestors Philip Livingston and William Samuel Johnson.[3] She attended St. Mary's Hall in Raleigh, North Carolina.[4]

Kennedy wrote in various genres, publishing poems,[5] children's books, and historical fiction.[6][7] She also wrote newspaper articles and short stories.[8][9] She worked as an editor at the Memphis Commercial Appeal, a Tennessee newspaper.[10] She was described as "the only woman paragrapher in the South".[11] She lectured to women's organizations,[12][13] and organized community groups.[4] She was a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution.[14] She favored prohibition and woman's suffrage.[1]

• "The Sign of the New Covenant" (1892)[15]
• "The Master of Brookfield" (1896)[16]
• The Assembly Ball (1897)[17]
• Redcoat and Continental (1897)[18]
• Doris: A Story of the Regulators (1898)[19]
• A Christmas Message from Ocracoke: A Legend of Colonial Days (1900)[20]
• "Colonial New Bern" (1901)[21]
• The Wooing of Judith (1902)[22]
• Joscelyn Cheshire: A Story of Revolutionary Days in the Carolinas (1902)[23]
• "How Earl Hargis Went A-shopping" (1904)[24]
• "When Tarleton Rode his Raid" (1904)[8]
• "At the Old Horse Sale" (1905)[9]
• Told in a Little Boy's Pocket (1908)[25]
• Cicely; a Tale of the Georgia March (1911)[26]
• One Wish, and other poems of love and life (1915)[27]
• Poems (1919)[28]

Cannon married fellow writer Walter Kennedy in 1888. Her husband died in 1909. She died in 1920.[1][10] Nashville's Nineteenth Century Club held a "Friendship Day" in memory of Kennedy in December 1920.[29] There is a collection of her papers in the collection of the Memphis Public Libraries.[4]