and Kennedy locked in combat on the ground . Conlan was afraid to shoot the lion because he thought he would also hit Kennedy . Conlan said at the time that he was able to fire one round into the animal ’ s hind quarters which caused Kennedy to scream , “ Don ’ t shoot me !” When Conlan retold the story thirty years later , he recalled , “ I can still hear her cool , unnerved voice …” He fired again with little effect . He battered its head with the butt of the shotgun before running back to his camp .
Conlan returned with a rifle and was able to kill the lion by shooting it in the shoulder and then the mouth . He picked up Kennedy and carried her back to camp where she and Wilson were made comfortable by Conlan ’ s wife Grace Conlan . Kennedy was bleeding heavily and seriously injured and the decision was made to take her to town for treatment .
An “ express ” wagon , a wagon with a bench seat and flat-bed was found to carry Kennedy and Wilson the roughly two-and-a-half miles to her home in Morgan Hill . Doctors J . T . Higgins and F . W . Watt tended to her wounds . She was horribly mauled , missing an ear , the flesh around her eye torn to the bone and her left arm showing fifteen gashes from wrist to shoulder .
Kennedy was nursed at her parents ’ home by her family and fiancé , Dr . Paul Otto Puck . Puck was a dentist practicing in Morgan Hill , a naturalized citizen who had come from Germany in 1893 . Wilson ’ s injuries were much less severe and he was making a quick recovery when he became ill . It became apparent that the lion , an adult female had been rabid . There was no cure in 1909 for rabies or hydrophobia , as it was then known . Wilson sickened and died about the end of August . It ’ s interesting to note that the Morgan Hill Times said the cause
of death was “ lockjaw and meningitis .” Kennedy was on the mend but realized that , if Wilson had contracted rabies from the lioness , she probably had as well . Her married sister , Maude Pickering came out from Kansas to be with her . Kennedy began to show symptoms on September 2 . She succumbed to the infection with Puck and her family around her on September 10 , 1909 .
Kennedy ’ s battle with the lioness and her death were reported in newspapers nationwide . She had been president of the Tri County Chapter of the Christian Women ’ s Temperance Union and popular as an “ elocutionist ” against the sins of liquor . People came from miles around for her funeral in front of her parent ’ s house on Dunne Avenue . It was said to be the largest funeral ever seen in Morgan Hill .
Kennedy was buried nearby in Mt . Hope Cemetery . Her popularity in the temperance movement and her heroic death made her a model for young women throughout the country . A movement was begun by a nine-year old school girl in Maine to purchase a suitable monument to mark her grave . The monument was installed in 1912 , purchased with the funds raised mostly by schoolchildren throughout the US .
Dr . Puck had stayed by Kennedy ’ s side through her terrible death . He was reported to have been deeply upset and there was nothing keeping him in Morgan Hill . He moved to Texas , opened a dental practice and married . He registered for the draft in both World
Wars and passed away in Southern California in 1959 .
Kennedy ’ s parents shortly moved from Morgan Hill after her death . Her mother , Harriet passed away in 1912 from unknown causes . Her father , John was a Civil War veteran . He moved about the San Jose area and died at ninety-one years old in 1939 .
Conlan kept the skin of the lioness he had shot . He had a taxidermist specifically preserve the head to resemble the ferocious look it had as it attacked Kennedy . Conlan died in 1949 . The skin was used as a rug for years in the Conlan family and a photo of it was made into the postcard pictured . One of Conlan ’ s daughters said that the rug was worn out and thrown away in the late 1960s .
The Fay brothers stayed in the area and passed away in the 1950s . No records for Lane were found to show where he went or when he died .
Pickering returned with his parents to Kansas and registered for the WWI draft there in 1917 . He served in the US Army and was killed at the Argonne forest on October 30 , 1918 , only about two weeks before the end of the war . He was buried in France in the American cemetery at age of twenty-four .
So , there you have it . The legend and the local hero behind it with some postcards to back it up .
As a post script , there were no fatal mountain lion attacks in California between Kennedy ’ s death in 1909 and 1994 , a span of eighty-five years . Since then there have been three .
GILROY • MORGAN HILL • SAN MARTIN NOVEMBER / DECEMBER 2017 gmhtoday . com
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