John Bozman Kerr, March 5th, 1809 - January 27th, 1878
married 1849 - Lucy Hamilton Stevens (1831 - 1899)
KERR, John Bozman, (son of John Leeds Kerr), a Representative from Maryland; born in Easton, Talbot County, Md., March 5, 1809; attended the common schools and Easton (Md.) Academy; was graduated from Harvard University in 1830; studied law; was admitted to the bar and commenced practice in Easton, Md., in 1833; member of the State house of delegates 1836-1838; deputy attorney general for Talbot County 1845-1848; elected as a Whig to the Thirty-first Congress (March 4, 1849-March 3, 1851); was not a candidate for renomination in 1850; appointed by President Fillmore Chargé d'Affaires to Nicaragua March 7, 1851, and served until July 27, 1853; resumed the practice of law in Baltimore and St. Michaels, Md., in 1854; appointed one of the solicitors in the Court of Claims, Washington, D.C., and served from February 8, 1864, to June 25, 1868, when the position was abolished; solicitor in the office of the Sixth Auditor of the Treasury Department from November 6, 1869, until his death in Washington, D.C., January [27?], 1878; interment in the family burial ground at "Bellville," near Oxford Neck, Talbot County, Md.
(From http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=K000137)
The Honorable Mr. Kerr's ancestral relations and close connection with leading men of colonial times would ensure him every respect from the world at large, had not his own merits and literary attainments and uncommon talents as a genealogist brought him into notice and correspondence with men from every State in the Union. His public duties carried him almost throughout the length and breadth of the land, and daily intercourse with intelligence men, his fellow citizens and foreigners, placed him in a position to be the peer of any and all whom he encountered.
On Saturday, January 25th, in the family burial ground at Belleville, the old Bozman homestead in Talbot County, his remains are reverently laid beside those of his loved parents and son.
His Children:
Lucy Hamilton Kerr / John Bozman Kerr Jr. / Leeds Clayborne Kerr
Arthur Dickens Kerr / Mark Brickell Kerr / Henrietta Maria Kerr
Halbert Stevens Kerr / Ruth Leeds Kerr / Kenneth Chamberlaine Kerr
Sarah Covington Kerr
From the journal of his daughter, Henrietta Maria Kerr.
Washington, D.C.
Nov. 1880
Papa was born March 1809, and graduated at Harvard University in 1830. Among his classmates were Oliver Wendell Holmes, "the Poet of the North"; Hon. Charles T. Sumner, and John O. Sargent. On leaving college in 1834 he took a trip to the West Indies and Cuba, and a few years later settled in Easton to practice law. In 1850 he was elected to Congress. The following year he was sent as minister to Central America and remained there nearly three years. On his return from South America Papa settled at St. Michaels, until 1869, when he was appointed a solicitor in the Court of Claims at Washington and removed us all to this city.
Our noble, good, kind Father was taken from us very suddenly. On Sunday January 27th, 1878, after a few hours illness of Angina Pectoris, he fell asleep, and entered into eternal rest. I never can forget that gray cold Sunday Morning, and the terrible feeling at my heart when I heard the Church bells ring out through the Sabbath stillness, and realized at last that he would never go to Church with us again-a thing he had never missed. He rests in the old family burial ground at Belleville, beside his loved parents and son.-In nature, I think Papa was more nearly perfect than anyone I ever knew. A good loving husband and the sweetest kindest Father, always ready and anxious to entertain and instruct his children, no matter how deeply engaged he might be. He was a scholar and a Christian gentleman, in every sense of that grand old word, and although the latter days of his life were full of cares and troubles, his sunny, kindly nature never changed; even in acute physical pain, he never failed in his loving tender care for us all.---------------------
From Mr. Ed Manfut, Central America Historian via email 1 August 2002:
Mr. J. B. Kerr was in charge of the American Business section of the USA embassy in Nicaragua by 1851, He was asked by the Secretary of State a very difficult task, He asked the Nicaraguan Gov. to remove its ambassador Mr.
Marcoletta,.. a very controversial ambassador which used to have a very "rude language for USA" in that time.