Germanicus Kent

Germanicus A. Kent was born in Suffield, Connecticut, in 1791 and attend Yale College.^[1][2][3] Around 1822, Kent moved to Huntsville, Alabama, establishing himself as a dry goods merchant, marrying Arabella Amiss of Blacksburg, Virginia, on June 7, 1827.^[1][2][3] Kent was later a cotton merchant as a partner in the firm of Patton, Donegan & Co at the Bell Cotton Factory on the Flint river near Huntsville.^[3]

The Kent family, including Lewis Lemon, a slave purchased by Germanicus as a boy, relocated to Illinois in 1834. After exploring the local area, Kent, Lemon and Thatcher Blake, a school teacher and farmer from Oxford, Maine, founded the settlement that was later to be called Rockford in 1834-1835.^[1][2][3][4] Germanicus and Arabella's daughter, Mary, was born in Rockford in 1836. They also had younger two sons called Lewis and John.^[1] In 1843, the Kent family returned to Arabella's hometown of Blacksburg, Virginia.^[1][2][3] Arabella died on May 26, 1851, and from 1856 Germanicus lived with his daughter, (now Mary Black) in Blacksburg until his death on March 1, 1862.^[3]

In 1976, a statue called "Pulling Together" depicting a stylized scene of the founders of Rockford dragging their supply wagon through a swamp was unveiled as part of the Founders Memorial on Wyman Street Bypass, Rockford.^[5]