Hirim Perkins Kenison was born in 1831 in Whitefield, New Hampshire, moving to Minnesota in the early 1850s. He there met his future wife, Sarah Bowdish Haurenson, who had been born in 1838 near Carlisle, Schoharie County, New York. The pair married in Helen, MN in December 1860.

During the U.S. Civil War, Kenison served with the Volunteer Minnesota Cavalry with Company D of Hatch's Battalion. He fought at Fort Abercombie during a Native American uprising against the Euro-American settlers.

In April 1863 Kenison was appointed postmaster on the stagecoach route at Plato, MN. Sarah and Hirim Kenison had four children: Charles M. (born 1862), Joseph W. (born 1868), Robert (born 1871 or 1872), and Nell or Nelle, born in 1882 after the family moved to Waterville, Marshall County, KS in the mid-1870s.

Son Charles Kenison married Elizabeth Fox (born 1866, possibly in Valley Falls, KS) in 1890 or 1892. He operated a hardware or builder's supply store in Goff, Nemaha County, KS before moving to Kansas City in 1905, operating a similar business in Westport, MO. In 1911, he built one of the first houses in J.C. Nichols' first Country Club district on East 55th Street. Charles Kenison died in January 1917 and his wife Elizabeth died in 1960.

Nell married Ebin J. House around 1906. House had been born in November 1881 in Burlington, Coffey County, KS. He had operated a restaurant with his brother Frank in Olathe, KS for several years before moving to Kansas City, MO and operating a dry goods and hardware store at 48th and Prospect Avenue, until his death in 1925. Nell died in April 1964.

As the Kenison children married and moved to Kansas City, Hirim and Sarah Kenison also decided to move to Kansas City in 1909 to be closer to their family. Hiram Kenison died in February 1923 and Sarah Kenison died in April 1920.