KEARNY, PHILIP (1815-1862), American soldier, was born in New York on the 2nd of June 1815, and was originally intended for the legal profession. He graduated at Columbia University (1833), but his bent was decidedly towards soldiering, and in 1837 he obtained a commission in the cavalry regiment of which his uncle, (General) Stephen Watts Kearny (1794-1848), was colonel and Lieutenant Jefferson Davis adjutant. Two years later he was sent to France to study the methods of cavalry training in vogue there. Before his return to the United States in 1840 he had served, on leave, in Algeria. He had inherited a large fortune, but he remained in the service, and his wide experience of cavalry work caused him to be employed on the headquarters staff of the army. After six more years’ service Kearny left the army, but almost immediately afterwards he rejoined, bringing with him a company of cavalry, which he had raised and equipped chiefly at his own expense, to take part in the Mexican war. In December 1846 he was promoted captain. In leading a brilliant cavalry charge at Churubusco he lost his left arm, but he remained at the front, and won the brevet of major for his gallantry at Contreras and Churubusco. In 1851 he again resigned, to travel round the world. He saw further active service with his old comrades of the French cavalry in the Italian war of 1859, and received the cross of the Legion of Honour for his conduct at Solferino. Up to the outbreak of the American Civil War he lived in Paris, but early in 1861 he hastened home to join the Federal army. At first as a brigade commander and later as a divisional commander of infantry in the Army of the Potomac, he infused into his men his own cavalry spirit of dash and bravery. At Williamsburg, Seven Pines, and Second Bull Run, he displayed his usual romantic courage, but at Chantilly (Sept. 1, 1862), after repulsing an attack of the enemy, he rode out in the dark too far to the front, and mistaking the Confederates for his own men was shot dead. His body was sent to the Federal lines with a message from General Lee, and was buried in Trinity Churchyard, New York. His commission as major-general of volunteers was dated July 4, 1862, but he never received it.
See J. W. de Peyster, Personal and Military History of Philip Kearny (New York, 1869).
KEARNY, a town of Hudson county, New Jersey, U.S.A., between the Passaic and Hackensack rivers, adjoining Harrison, and connected with Newark by bridges over the Passaic. Pop. (1900), 10,896, of whom 3597 were foreign-born; (1910 census), 18,659. The New York & Greenwood Lake division of the Erie railroad has a station at Arlington, the principal village (in the N.W. part), which contains attractive residences of Newark, Jersey City and New York City business men. The town covers an area of about 7 sq. m., including a large tract of marsh-land. In Kearny are railway repair shops of the Pennsylvania system, and a large abattoir; and there are numerous manufactures. The value of the town’s factory products increased from $1,607,002 in 1900 to $4,427,904 in 1905, or 175.5%. Among its institutions are the State Soldiers’ Home, removed here from Newark in 1880, a Carnegie library, two Italian homes for orphans, and a Catholic Industrial School for boys.
The neck of land between the Passaic and the Hackensack rivers, for 7 m. N. from where they unite, was purchased from the proprietors of East Jersey and from the Indians by Captain William Sandford in 1668 and through Nathaniel Kingsland, sergeant-major of Barbadoes, received the name “New Barbadoes.” After the town under this name had been extended considerably to the northward, the town of Lodi was formed out of the S. portion in 1825, the town of Harrison was founded out of the S. portion of Lodi in 1840, and in 1867 a portion of Harrison was set apart as a township and named in honour of General Philip Kearny, a former resident. Kearny was incorporated as a town in 1895.
KEARY, ANNIE (1825-1879), English novelist, was born near Wetherby, Yorkshire, on the 3rd of March 1825, the daughter of an Irish clergyman. She was the author of several children’s books and novels, of which the best known is Castle Daly, an Irish story. She also wrote an Early Egyptian History (1861) and The Nation Around (1870). She died at Eastbourne on the 3rd of March 1879.
KEATE, JOHN (1773-1852), English schoolmaster, was born at Wells, Somersetshire, in 1773, the son of Prebendary William Keate. He was educated at Eton and King’s College, Cambridge, where he had a brilliant career as a scholar; taking holy orders, he became, about 1797, an assistant master at Eton College. In 1809 he was elected headmaster. The discipline of the school was then in a most unsatisfactory condition, and Dr Keate (who took the degree of D.D. in 1810) took stern measures to improve it. His partiality for the birch became a by-word, but he succeeded in restoring order and strengthening the weakened authority of the masters. Beneath an outwardly rough manner the little man concealed a really kind heart, and when he retired in 1834, the boys, who admired his courage, presented him with a handsome testimonial. A couple of years before he had publicly flogged eighty boys on one day. Keate was made a canon of Windsor in 1820. He died on the 5th of March 1852 at Hartley Westpall, Hampshire, of which parish he had been rector since 1824.