Harold O'Kelley
As a retired criminal investigator I try to speak plainly and to the
point so while my below analysis is blunt, I do not seek to be rude
or disrespectful and if I appear to be I apologize. I have a great deal of respect
and gratitude for the person and the work of Harold O'Kelley as he
spent his time and money to add to our knowledge about our ancestors and thanks
to him a great deal of our ancestry has been preserved for all time but more
importantly he gave us a different thought about our earlier ancestors. Given
the resources available to Harold one has to acknowledge the amount of effort,
time, and money invested for what was probably a very minor financial return but
it is certain he did not do it for money, he did it to express his love of his
ancestors and his faith and by finding a merchant named William Kelly living in
the portion of King and Queen County Virginia that became Caroline County Harold
unknowingly added a very important clue to the identity of our last Irish
Grandfather to die in Ireland as found in the Prerogative Wills of Ireland in
1748 is a William Kelly, Merchant and Gentleman. Combined with Ruth Barton
Pullium's family story
that
our ancestor came from Co Meath it leaves little doubt that the William Kelly
that Harold found was the older brother of our ancestor who was settled and
paved the way for our ancestor who is identified in a the 100 year old Pedigree
written by Dr Thomas K O'Kelley as "James O'Kelley of Ireland". The Thomas
O'Kelley that Alethea Jane Macon believed was our ancestor was our first Irish
Protestant Grandfather who converted in the 16th century so all the pieces of
this puzzle have come together and Harold Earnest O'Kelley's research and book
was critical in making that happen.
Harold was
not as fortunate as I because a
great deal of my information came to me in a computer file from my
aunt Kathleen and from her very large starting point much of what I
have discovered about our family I have found from the comfort of my
easy chair with my laptop. I have no doubt that if DNA science has
been known and affordable at the time Harold prepared this book, he
would have followed my path to narrow the search. Thanks to DNA I
know that our family did not descend from the
Scots Irish
but because they lived around them in Ireland their influence can not be denied and if
Harold had
known the information that has become available to me who knows
what he may have done with it to uncover more. Science has
made my work much easier and more precise but I still
have to analyze the data and do additional research to
understand what the data might be telling me, that didn't come to me with
the result of my DNA, it has taken me a great many hours of reading
and reading again the same material to understand the customs of the
Irish and how those customs influenced our family and I am just as
certain that some new science will be discovered in our future and
some new generation of O'Kelley will take up where I have left off
and probably prove me wrong in many of my conclusions so nothing
that I record should be taken as condemnation of any researcher who came before
me. In the end
all our goals are the same; we are attempting to learn as much as
possible about our ancestors, who they were and from where they
came. It is in this light that I make my assessments of
my opinion about the mentioned author's work. My only purpose with this
page is to make readers aware that some (not all) of the Harold's work may
not be invalid as indicated by the result of my DNA testing and they should consider
this as they do their research.
Harold O'Kelley - Four Families
through Georgia (1985) |
Thanks to the generosity of
Shannon, a daughter, I have the pleasure
of reading this book about her O'Kelley line of our family in its entirety.
This very large red covered volume is very impression,
a great deal of time and resources were invested and at the time Harold O'Kelley wrote his book, the
data was not "on line", his resources were available only by shoe
leather and travel but when I began my journey in the spring of
2009 I had Google Books to guide me as I began my "cold
case" investigation of our ancestors. To read Dr John
O'Donovan's 1843
Tribes and Customs of Hy-Many, I had only to do a Google search
and begin reading and since that time I have also read the many
Vestry records from the places our ancestors live which are now on line. Harold quotes
Alethea Jane Macon a great deal, he had her previous work to
aid his investigation so he started at a point greater than
she but given Macon provides no evidence to support most of her claims
about our early family,
her book
may have been more hindrance than help because it seems to have directed
Harold's research in a predefined way. That was not
Alethea Jane Macon's fault
that Harold accepted Macon's claim that Thomas was the name of our
ancestor anymore than it is Harold O'Kelley's fault that some descendant
today replicates William of Caroline Co as the father of Thomas.
In both author's defense I have years of training and experience in tracking people
who are difficult to locate and analyzing the limited records
they create as they lived so it must be expected that I might
see something differently than Harold and we
come to a different conclusions when we read the same data. The
fact that I disagree with some of his conclusions should not be
taken as a criticism of a man who is clearly accomplished in his
own right. My training makes me unhampered by religion or the
influence of my family, I don't really care if our ancestors
were Catholic, Protestant, Methodist, Baptists, or had no
religion my only interest in my ancestor's religion is in how it
might aid in unlocking data about them. In Harold O'Kelley's
book the religious overtones are obvious and understandable and
in some cases I believe they have influenced his research taking him in a
desired direction. He was Baptist so he believed his
ancestors were also Baptist and that appears to have limited the scope
of his research. I don't disagree with his data, but I do
have reservations about some of his conclusions based upon his
data just as surely as some will disagree with my conclusions about my
data. Harold seems to believe that our shared first
grandfather who came to America would act and think the way we
might act or think and that could not be further from the
truth. We know Harold would not have traded a daughter for a cow
but that is the life our shared grandfather lived even at that
late date. In 1750 our ancestors believed it was Christian to
own and work slaves and husbands were selected for daughters by
their father in what was most often a financial transaction.
In his book Harold says our ancestor and Ms Dean met and married
in King and Queen County but he fails to understand how
difficult it would be for an Irish born native to marry an English
descended woman so I suspect the O'Kelley and Deane connection began in
Ireland and not in Virginia.
Harold's body of work may be more important for what he is
unable to prove than what he could prove. I don't think
J Fred O'Kelly or
Alethea Jane Macon did much
research, I think they mostly took what others told them and
published it. Harold clearly conducted an
investigation, he hired professional researchers to aid him and
he used his training and education to try to make sense of it
all and in the end, very little was found and that too is
important because it tells us what doesn't exist. No records
were found to prove that Thomas O'Kelley was the name of our
ancestor.
There is a golden nugget for me found in Harold's book
and it concerns the the source of
Alethea Jane Macon's best evidence claim that Thomas was the name of our
immigrant ancestor and that leads me to the 1938 book by John Gwathney
titled "Historical
Register of Virginians in the Revolution" which records the
service of Lt William D O'Kelly and Lt Thomas D O'Kelly.
The DAR gives this published source as
Alethea Jane Macon evidence
that my
grandfather Charles serving in the 8th Virginia. I think
this may have also been
Alethea Jane Macon "best
evidence". To his credit Harold
tracked Lt Thomas D O'Kelley to its source and shared in his
book that
Lt Thomas D was a mistake, that he was Lt William D O'Kelly.
I think Harold unknowingly discovered Macon's "best evidence".
Harold also found in the court records a merchant William Kelley in
Caroline Co Virginia that he believed might be our ancestor's father.
My research suggest that William Kelley the Merchant was the brother of
our ancestor and he was the son of William Kelly merchant and gentleman
who died in Kells Ireland in 1748. I think it likely William paved
the way for our ancestor to bring his young family to the portion of
King and Queen that became Caroline Co Virginia.
Webmaster:
Rick O'Kelley
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