Andrew Kennedy was a master house painter, whose business was based in Hawick. His parents were Thomas Kennedy, a shepherd, and Agnes (‘Margaret’) Armstrong, who had married in Selkirk in 1806. In 1849 he married Elizabeth Morgan and they had six children. After her death in 1863 he remarried to Elizabeth (‘Lizzie’) Easton in 1865. Kennedy was a Councillor for Wilton Ward for many years and in 1863 donated works of art, including his own portrait of 'Tommie Roberton', to the Hawick Archaeological Society for its ‘Gallery of Local Characters’. An article, in the Southern Reporter of 7th February 1895, shows that this was a local Hawick character named Tammie Roberton, whom it described as a ‘half pedlar and half beggar’, who travelled the district with his box of string, needles, pins, laces, matches etc.