Questions:
-
How are you,
the webmaster, related
to the family in this site? Answer
-
Did our family come
from Ireland? Answer
-
Why do I not find the
spelling 'O'Kelley" living in Ireland at the time our Ancestor is believed to
have come to America? Answer
-
What does the "O" and
"Mac" mean? Answer
-
Is our first America
Ancestor James or Thomas? Answer
-
I am a male descendent
of this family, would a
DNA test benefit the family research? Answer
-
I submitted a
DNA sample and many of the matches are to people with names
other than Kelly, what is the deal? Answer
-
Does your site have
errors? Answer
-
Why can I not find a
marriage document on some of my line? Answer
-
Is
Rev
James O'Kelly related to our family? Answer
-
How did our
O'Kelley name evolve?
Answer
-
Were our ancestors
Catholic? Answer
Answers
1
Question: How are you,
the webmaster, related to
this family?
Answer: I descended from
James,
Charles,
Charles
Dean,
James Stamps,
Charles
Williams,
Albert
Henry,
Conley Horton line.
2
Question: Did our family come from
Ireland?
Answer: My DNA results indicate that my immigrant ancestor
came from somewhere around Kells Co Meath Ireland and both DNA and the
family tradition story of Ruth Barton Pullium
indicates were are the O'Kelley fo Tara, the
O'Kelley of Bregia.
3
Question:
Why do I not find the spelling "O'Kelley" in Ireland at the time our
Ancestor is believed to have come to America?
Answer:
Surnames came into use in Ireland around 900 AD and when rarely written
those names were spelled in Gaelic based upon their sound. There
were no language rules, only a few Bards and Poets could read and write
so most of the time those who could read and write were pretty much
making it up as they went along. The English invaded Ireland in
the twelfth century and having to live on the island it forced the
Gaelic Irish and the English Irish to attempt to find common ground for
communications. Both languages used a lot of extra letters in
their words and English used a lot of extra "e". The tiny number
of landed Gentry O'Kelleys who may have used the English language early
would have spelled their name in English with extra letters.
It seems certain that our O'Kelley family at Tara would have been one of
the first because we came into contact with the English first. It is likely the earliest English spelling was O Kellie but may have
been O Kelleyee. It is difficult to know because there are few written documents
available on line to consult. It was during the
time of Queen Elizabeth that she forced ruling Irish to learn the English language
and change their name to English version which including dropping the
"O" and "Mac" from their names, those that refused
lost their lands and titles. As English became more
standardized and rules were created the unnecessary extra letters were
stripped out and in our that that resulted in the large number of Kelly
spellings in the world today. There is no right or wrong, one is
free to use any spelling they desire but my family has a long held
tradition that we have always used O'Kelley and that we descend from the
"Old Irish Kings" and that may be true.
4
Question: What does the "O" and
"Mac" mean?
Answer: The Irish did not have surnames as we think of them.
They referenced descendents as the "son of", "grandson of", "daughter
of", or "grand daughter of". The Gaelic spelling of the living
head of the Kelly family was Ceallach so the sons were MacCeallaigh,
grandsons were Ua Ceallaigh, daughters were Nic Ceallaigh, and grand
daughters were Ni Ceallaigh. Over time Ó Ceallaigh meaning
descendant of Cealach came into being and that is probably the source
for the English spelling of the O'Kelley name. Because these names were not
surnames as we think of surnames, when a woman married a Kelly she did not change her name
because she could not become a daughter or grand daughter or descendant of Ceallach as
the result of marriage. What really complicates this is one may
find a name like Teige MacDonald O'Kelly. What this tells the Irish
reader is Teige was the son of Donald and a grandson or descendant of
Ceallach. Sometimes the O'Kelly might be dropped by the next
generation and they would become McDonald.
5
Question: Is our first American Ancestor
James, Thomas, or William?
Answer: The
1752 Lunenburg Tithe Census and
1782 Virginia Census for
Mecklenburg Co both indicate the only Kelly in the records is a
William
and if one accepts Macon's book this was the name of the first
grandson to be born in America, the son of Charles and Mary
was named William and their next child a daughter was named
Elizabeth
Dean. I have great doubts this William Kelly is
of our family as another line of Kelly has a family tree that includes
the same William Kelly and I think they are correct. I think that
all these William Kellys living in and around our ancestors descended
from Giles Kelly. None of the Giles Kelly descendents appear as
O'Kelley while all our ancestors do and I think that sets the two
families apart as not being related. After four years intense
investigation, I believe our ancestor was James O'Kelley born about 1715
and he first married Nancy (Anna) Dean maybe in Ireland and she bore him
Rev James, Thomas, George, William and Benjamin then she died about 1758
and James married her much younger sisiter Elizabeth Dean and she bore
him Charles born in 1760 and not 1756 as Macon gives, Francis, John,
Elizabeth, and Nancy. In the time of James, Nancy, and Elizabeth
marrying a dead spouses sibling was common but in the 1800s this was
considered a sin so I think for religious reasons descendents hid what
they believed was their ancestor's sin. I believe James O'Kelley
was the James Kelly who died Sept 11 1777 at the Battle of Brandywine.
6
Question: I am a male descendent of
this family, would a DNA test benefit the family research?
Answer: If you have descended from one of the other brothers,
from Thomas, Francis, Benjamin, George, or William Denis the answer is
yes. If you descended from my line which is Charles then your DNA
results should be almost identical to mine. By having other males
from these different lines join the
Kelley project it would better tell us how we are related to other
Irish Kellys. Click on the
Kelly project link and I recommend you purchase a 37 marker test
which is about $150. Only a male O'Kelley can do this, if
your mother or grandmother was an O'Kelley this test will be of no
benefit to the O'Kelley research. If a descendent of
Rev James
O'Kelly joins the project and submits a sample it would confirm or
deny his relationship to our family. To date I know of only
one such descendent and he has provided no response to my request that
he submit a sample.
7
Question: I submitted a DNA sample
and many of the matches are to people with names other than Kelly, what
is the deal?
Answer: The Irish were a warrior race. They not only
fought as mercenaries in foreign wars but raided their Irish and English
neighbors taking the men as work slaves and the women as sex slaves.
In those days the spoils of war also included sexually raping the women
of the conquered and certainly some children were born as a result.
There are certainly some O'Kelleys who didn't descend from an O'Kelley
ancestor and there are some of other surnames who did descend from an
O'Kelley ancestor because of this practice and because of Irish naming
customs. We like to think of our early ancestors as these warm and
gentle Christians but the truth is Christianity had little impact on the
day to day behavior of many warrior races. The word "berserk" was
invented to describe how our ancestors fought. The Romans would
hire them as mercenaries and there are accounts of entire legions going
into battle totally nude and fighting like men in an uncontrollable
rage. They would win just because they scared their enemy
into defeat. Another common practice to try to keep the peace
between Irish clans was they would exchange their eldest sons as
hostages. This way if war broke out, the son would be killed
giving each side a greater incentive to behave but this didn't work very
well peace would be for a brief time and during that time the hostage
son would be forced to marry one of his enemy's daughters. Because
of the way the Irish naming rules were applied an O'Kelley being held
hostage by the O'Farrell clan and forced to marry a daughter of an
Farrell, their off spring would bear the name of O'Farrell and not
O'Kelley because of their relationship to their mother and her
relationship to the clan. It wouldn't be wise to have a flock of
children in the O'Farrell clan names O'Kelley and the same tradition
applied with the O'Farrell hostage held by the O'Kelley clan.
But there were other customs. The Irish nobility would send their
children to be fostered and raised by other families and Irish men held
the right to return a wife and her children back to her family.
Irish women did not take their husbands name so when children were put
out by their father they could and did take the name of their mother. These
customs
of course makes genealogy with the Irish much more difficult and these
customs are not widely known so many have no idea that they were in
practice.
We can't apply our values when we are
doing our research. Source:
"The
Short History of Ireland" by Dr Johnathan Bardon
8
Question: Does your site have
errors?
Answer: Yes, nothing created by humans is perfect and certainly
this site has some guess work in it. Even if the data is
backed up by government documents or church records that does not mean the civil servant
that created the document didn't make an error. For example, many
of the early marriage documents are probably the date the license was
obtained and not the date the marriage actually occurred.
9
Question: Why can I not find a
marriage document on some of my line?
Answer: This is going to come as a shock to many but one
of the "common law" rights that English won from their King was the
ability to marry without government or church intervention. George and
Martha Washington setup house and ran an notice in the local paper
announcing their marriage. For many marriage was a simple
formality where the priest would say a few words and enter their names
in the church registry. State and church marriage was expensive
and it has been estimated that at least 30% did not seek a state or
church marriage because they could not afford it but some did later when
they could afford it seek such a marriage which explains why sometimes
children would appear born four or five years before the marriage
record. It wasn't until the early 1800s that
mostly southern states began to enact marriage licensing laws as a way
to prevent blacks and whites from common law marriages. You may
not find marriage records because at the time and place they may not
have been required.
10
Question: Is Rev James O'Kelly
related to our family?
Answer: Without official documents only a DNA sample from a
male descendent of Rev James O'Kelly will tell us for certain. In
my opinion there are more reason to believe he was than to believe he
was not.
-
Rev James O'Kelly is
documented by
Elon University and their researchers believe he was born in
Mecklenburg Co Virginia between 1735 and 1738. Given that our
ancestor is believed to have lived in Mecklenburg Co Virginia at the
about the time Rev James was born gives some cause to believe he
could be related to our family as this is where many of our first
America born ancestors were born.
-
The
1838
Bible pages records the first born child of Francis O'Kelly was
James OKelley and it was the tradition of the Irish to name their
first born male after the paternal grandfather so clearly the name
of James does appear often in our early family but it also appeared
often in many early American families so by itself this has no
weight but when added to the rest it can be an indicator.
-
Peter Jefferson
Kernolde's claim in his early 20th century book titled "Lives
of Christian ministers: over two hundred memoirs" where he
states that Rev John P
O'Kelly, James O'Kelly,
and
Francis D O'Kelly (descendents of our family) are descendents of
Rev James O'Kelly. He doesn't support his claim with
documentation so by its self this isn't a valid claim but added to
everything else it makes it more possible.
-
A George and Delilah
Crowder also appears in the
Elon University Rev James O'Kelly collection. This
was an 1804 marriage of
John Kelley and Frances Crowder and the best man was a Charles
Kelley. The line just above this was the marriage of
Frances
O'Kelly and Delilah Crowder and George Crowder is mentioned
indicating a possible connection.
-
Rev James's
gravestone bears the name O'Kelley and his stone was set just
about the time our family began to use the O'Kelley spelling of the
name.
-
About 1904
Dr Thomas K O'Kelley
submitted a Civil War Pension application and he included with that
application his family tree that he reportedly copied out of one of
his ancestor's bibles. We do not know who that bible belonged to but
copies of Dr O'Kelley's pages have come to be known as the O'Kelley
bible pages and those pages not only give our ancestor as James
O'Kelley but also lists a son missing for our traditional telling of
our ancestor, a son named James O'Kelley born in 1735 the same year
as Rev James O'Kelly was believed to be born. This supports
item #2 above.
-
I think it likely that Rev James
O'Kelly is the first born son of James and Anna O'Kelley.
11
Question: How did our
O'Kelley name
evolve?
Answer: No one
can say for certain but there is considerable reason to believe that
before the 1500 some translated the name into English probably because
they were either exporters or importers or wealthy and educated and
before the influence of the printing press most spelling was regional so
one could spell their name anyway they wished. I have found early
examples where the double "e" spelling was used but after the printing
press and the mass distribution of books because of profit many words
and names were streamlined as to fit more words on a page.
What we do know is in Gaelic at the time our ancestor was believed to
come to America the name was spelled as
Ö Ceallaigh
which is pronounced "O Kelley". We know that Colla Kelly the Irish
Lord of the Manor of Screen
changed his name at the request of Queen Elizabeth somewhere around 1601
to the English form of "Kelly" giving us an insight as to why our
ancestor may have changed his name from its Gaelic form to the English
form. There were at least three other Irish lords that did the
same including the Ceallach of the clan. We know from Sir James
Ware's 1705 book titled "The
Antiquities and History of Ireland" that even before Colla there
were Ö Ceallaighs around Galway that were using both o Kelly and o
Kelley so when the Irish tell us that the double "e" spelling was never
used in Ireland you can point then to Ware's book as proof that there
was. It is very likely our ancestor came to America either as
Kelly or Kelley without any "O" as we see documents for first American
born ancestors as Kelly and Kelley. It appears during or after our
Revolutionary War the reason to spell our name to please our English
masters was no longer valid and we begin to see the impact of our newly
established freedoms as the OKelly spelling of our name began to appear.
The
1838
Bible pages reveals Francis as an O'Kelly then we can see how his
children were listed as OKelley then we see how his grandchildren appear
as O'Kelley. The apostrophe was never used by the Irish in the
Gaelic spelling, and it only seems to appear in the English spelling in
Ireland in books written after 1800. Just like most Americans, our
name has been altered to fit the need, make it easier to pronounce and
to fit the every changing English rules. The apostrophe was added in the
early 1800s I suspect because of the effort to standardize its use.
I have been told that
descendents of Rev James O'Kelley never used the O'Kelley spelling of
our name but we know that isn't entirely true. Rev James
gravestone certainly bears "O'Kelley" although it was put there by
friends and
James Franklin O'Kelly appears
in two US Census as an O'Kelley, I could see one mistake but not two.
I do know there are O'Kellys and O'Kelleys to appear on modern
gravestones from members of the same family in OKlahoma. I wonder
if the reason Rev James never used the double "e" spelling had something
to do with his father marrying Elizabeth Dean after the death of his
mother Nancy.
12
Question: Were our ancestors Catholic?
Answer: DNA
proves that was true because our ancestors came from Ireland and were
part of the ancestral Irish who lived in Ireland for more than 1000
years meaning our ancestors before the time of King Henry VIII or living
before 1530 would have been Roman Catholic but this is a bit more
complicated. Since the founding of the Roman Catholic faith in
about 325 AD there has been only one Christian church and anyone who
believed something other that what that church allowed was put to death
most often in one of many very cruel manners for the crime of heresy so
the Irish like the English and Scots and many others living in France,
Spain and other places in the world had no choice, they had to be Roman
Catholic or die. Henry VIII changed much of this over his lust for a
woman. He wanted his marriage annulled claiming that his marriage
to his dead brother's wife was against the laws of God. Only the Pope
held the power to grant an annulment and when the Pope
refused, Henry VIII declared himself the head of the Roman Catholic
Churches in England and Ireland and Henry set about to force all the English
and Irish to convert. He did not want the Irish Catholic on his west
coast and the Catholic French and Spanish on his east and every since
that time a great many innocent people have been murdered as the result.
Northern Ireland is at peace at the moment but just two decades ago they
were not. Not much really
changed in England or Ireland with the new religion, the churches and priest that converted
went on pretty much the way they did before, they had to pledge their
loyalty to the English King and had to use his newly created "Great
Bible" but church life was pretty much the same.
But that wasn't the case for those who refused to embrace Henry as the
head of the church, for them great horrors were in store. There
was a time when a bounty
was put on the head of Irish Roman Catholic priests, they could be
hunted down like a deer and killed and their body presented for a cash
reward. For the Irish people who refuse to convert, they were
either killed outright or forced to America or other English colonies as
indentured servants or moved to western Ireland to make room for the
protestant English and Scotts who were loyal to the English Crown and
willing to
settle the lands taken from the native Irish. This has been the basis for the almost 400 years of
war in Ireland. A great many O'Kelly ancestors died in the
conflict defending their lands and their faith. Now to the answer.
Because Rev James O'Kelly was a minister in the Church of England it
seems certain that his father and several grandfathers were Protestant
because one didn't just decide to become a minister in the church of
England, this was tightly controlled and mostly hereditary, passed down
from grandfather, father, to son and there are two published sources
that claim that James O'Kelley who came from Ireland about 1748 was also
a minister in the Church of England and that seems likely given that his
sons married English descended women, something that would not have been
permitted if he had been Irish Catholic.