Ancestors

Thomas Kelly

Thomas Kelly was born on 28 February 1829 in Kentucky, in Pulaski County by family accounts. His parents, Samuel Kelly and Nancy Kennedy, were natives of Virginia who had settled in Kentucky when it was still forest. His mother died when he was twelve. His older brother was the Reverend Clinton Kelly.

He went to subscription schools, since Kentucky had no public schools yet, and divided his time between school and the home farm until he was sixteen. Then he worked a year on the farm of a brother-in-law and two more years near his father's place.

In 1848, at nineteen, he started overland for Oregon. Family accounts say he travelled in the large Kelly wagon train with his brother Clinton. He took up a donation land claim on the Willamette river, part of which later lay inside the city of Portland, and ran a sawmill there for five years. A donation land claim was free land the federal government granted to early settlers in the Oregon country.

On 10 March 1853 he married Christina Elizabeth Sunderland, a fifteen-year-old Illinois girl whose family had also come to Portland. In 1854 he sold the sawmill and began farming, and he farmed his Oregon place until 1871. In the 1850s he served in the Oregon Mounted Volunteers, raised to protect the settlers during the Indian wars.

In 1871 the family moved to Yakima County, Washington Territory, and took up land in the Wenas country twelve miles northwest of North Yakima. In July 1878, during the Bannock war scare, the Kellys were among about eighty settlers who crowded into a dirt breastwork around John Cleman's cabin. By the time of his death the ranch ran to 515 acres, stocked with cattle and horses, with a large barn and a comfortable house. He was a Methodist, a Republican and a justice of the peace for his precinct.

His children were Martha (Mrs. Osborn), Sena (Mrs. Ritter), Henry, Nannie (Mrs. Zenas Bolton), Lura (Mrs. Parrish), Minnie (Mrs. Stevens) and Wilbur. Albert Alsinas died in 1889. Nannie and Wilbur were born in Yakima County and the rest in Oregon. In 1890 Thomas signed his consent to Nannie's marriage to Zenas Bolton when she was fourteen.

Thomas Kelly died at his ranch on 16 October 1903, aged 74. A telegram carried the news to his nephew Dr. Richmond Kelly in Portland, and The Oregonian ran his obituary on 19 October. It counted seven living children, twenty-three grandchildren and six great-grandchildren. He is buried in the Wenas Cemetery under a tall marble shaft that reads: In loving remembrance of Thomas Kelly, born Feb. 28, 1829, died Oct. 16, 1903. A pension for his Indian-war service had been granted at last, almost fifty years on, and the notice reached his family two days after he died.

If Thomas Kelly is in your family, start your own tree.

Cite: Heirology, "Thomas Kelly (1829-1903)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/thomas-kelly-1829-1903-f58a98.