John Kennedy Street was born on May 13, 1837, in Tennessee to Joseph Street and Mary Armstrong. He grew up and attended school in Giles County, Tennessee, and his family owned $1,000 of real estate in 1850. They moved to Lamar County, Texas, around 1854, and Street became a minister and the principal of a religious seminary there. In 1860, he was still living with his mother and siblings, and he owned $500 of personal property. He married Melinda Pace on July 9, 1861, and they had at least two children: Elizabeth, born around 1862; and Jeannie, born around 1876.

 

Street enlisted in the Confederate army on September 26, 1861, and mustered in as a private in the 9^th Texas Infantry on November 26. The army eventually transferred him to the 14^th Texas Cavalry and assigned him as the regiment’s chaplain. Union forces captured him in Mississippi on January 14, 1864, and he was imprisoned for at least six months. He eventually rejoined his regiment and served until the end of the war.

 

Street and his family settled in Waco, Texas, after the war, and he continued to work as a minister. In 1870, he owned $3,500 of real estate and $300 of personal property. He began editing a monthly periodical in the 1870s. The 1880 federal census described him as “wounded” and explained that he was disabled by “pain.” His wife Melinda died in Waco on December 2, 1897, and he married Ada Smith around 1901. They moved to Dallas sometime before 1910, and Street began working full-time as a newspaper editor. He applied for a Confederate pension in May 1911, complaining of a “stiff left knee.” At the time, he testified, he “earn[ed] about $650 net a year from my paper…and care with it my wife, her mother and two orphan granddaughters.” He died in Waco on October 1, 1914.

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