William Kelly

1825-1914 · Kentucky

Born 1825, Kentucky

Died 1914

Children include William

William Kelly was reared in Pike County, Kentucky, on the Big Sandy side of the mountains. His son William Harvey Kelley was born there on 8 August 1845. When Harvey married Sarah Mullins in Wise County, Virginia, on 29 September 1868, the clerk entered the groom's parents as Wm. Kelly and H. Kelly. Family accounts name Harvey's mother Hannah Osborne.

In February 1904 the Richmond Times-Dispatch printed a piece about ten people past eighty who lived near Freeling, in Dickenson County, Virginia, with a picture of each. Of him it said: "William Kelly, eighty, was reared in Pike county, Ky., but has lived here for many years; was a soldier in the Union army during the Civil War. He is passing his last days at the house of one of his sons." That would put his birth about 1824.

He lived ten years more. When he died in January 1914, at the home of his son Harvey near Freeling, nobody knew his exact age. The Big Stone Gap Post said that "the oldest people of this place remember him as an old man in their young days," and that he was thought to have been near one hundred. The two figures cannot both be right, and the 1904 one, given while he was alive, is the likelier.

Late in life, a little more than a year before his death, he joined the Primitive Baptist church. By then he was so helpless that he had to be carried into the water in a chair to be baptized. Harvey's family lived on Brush Creek, near Freeling and Clintwood, where William spent his last years.

Children

William Harvey Kelley 1845-1933

Sources

The Big Stone Gap Post (Big Stone Gap, Virginia), 14 January 1914, page 1; clipping posted on Find a Grave memorial 83773445.

Virginia, Bureau of Vital Statistics, County Marriage Registers, 1853-1935, Wise County, 1868; FamilySearch ark 61903/1:1:DMRH-CDW2; also Virginia, Marriages, 1785-1940, ark 61903/1:1:X5YJ-9T7.

Richmond Times-Dispatch, 7 February 1904, page 7; Virginia Chronicle, Library of Virginia, page TD19040207.1.7.

United States census 1910, Clintwood district (13), Dickenson County, Virginia, sheet 19B; NARA T624; FamilySearch ark 61903/1:1:MPL5-6WY.

Richmond Times-Dispatch, 7 February 1904, page 7; Virginia county marriage registers, Wise County, 29 September 1868, Harvey Kelly, FamilySearch ark 1:1:DMRH-CDW2; The Big Stone Gap Post (Big Stone Gap, Virginia), 14 January 1914, page 1, "Oldest Man in Dickenson County Dead", clipping posted on Find a Grave memorial 83773445; Dickenson County Herald, 21 September 1939, page 1; United States census 1910, Clintwood district, Dickenson County, sheet 19B, FamilySearch ark 1:1:MPL5-6WY.

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

Cite: Heirology, "William Kelly (1825-1914)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/william-kelly-1825-1914-00bd23.