In the middle of the 18th century, after about 15 years in Pennsylvania, Jacob Kennamer moved his family south. Many Palatine settlers left Pennsylvania for Maryland, Virginia and the Carolinas around this time. The French and Indian Wars were in progress and the Palatine area was much affected. They were on the real frontier at that time.

Harkness Kenimer reports that a Jacob Kennemars bought land in Maryland in 1747 and sold it in 1751.

Jacob Kennamer and his family, including his three sons, John, George and Hans farmed in Fairfield County, South Carolina toward the end of the 1700s. Jacob and Hance Cannemore appear in the 1800 South Carolina census. John Cannemore also appears in a different part of the census. Jacob Kennamer probably died in South Carolina between 1800 and 1810, but his grave site remains unknown. There are no census records for Cannemore or the other likely spellings in Fairfield County after 1800.

Quoting from Willard Kennamer's book, Kennamer Genealogies, “The first record we have of Hance Kennemur is that on November 24, 1771, he bought 100 acres of land from Peter Rees located about two miles north of Salem Crossroad, Rocky and Beaver creeks, Fairfield County, South Carolina.” We don't know where the family was between the 1751 sale of the Maryland land and the 1771 purchase of the Fairfield County land.

The land Hans Kennamer bought in 1771 is shown on the maps below.

The family was in South Carolina during the Revolutionary War, but we have located no records of whether any Kennamers participated. Certainly their farm would have been in the thick of the action, being near the major battles of Camden, Kings Mountain and Cowpens .

Other land purchases followed over the years. In 1807, Hans sold 484 acres and moved his family to north Alabama, originally settling on the Flint River in Madison County for about eight years. About 1815, he built a cabin in what is now Kennamer Cove, becoming  one of the first settlers in that part of the country.

There is a GenWeb site for Fairfield County with many interesting links.