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 any
O'Kelleys 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
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 we are related to a
line of
Irish Kings who ruled over an area known as Ui Maine (O'Kelley country in
Ireland). I share a common male ancestor with the current living descended
of Hy-Many in Ireland between 550 and 950 years ago.
3
Question:
Why do I not find any O'Kelleys living in Ireland at the time our
Ancestor is believed to have come to America?
Answer:
Before the time of King Henry VIII all of Ireland and England was Roman
Catholic there was no other Christian faith. The Irish spoke Gaelic and those that could read and
write wrote mostly in Gaelic. There were those who were highly
educated that knew many languages but that wasn't true for the common
Irish. When King Henry VII broke with the pope and made himself
head of the English and Irish church and had the "Great Bible" created
to replace the Catholic Bible this set Ireland and England on a very
long war where both sides committed many horrific acts. Some of
the ruling Irish went against their people and embraced the English and
to show their loyalty they were required to learn the English language
and change their name to English version which including dropping the
"O" and "Mac" from their names. I have found a very early book
written by Sir James Ware that does lists o Kelley and o Kellys so it
does seem that very early Gaelic to English translations could have used
the double "e" spelling but that doesn't appear to have lasted very
long. It should be noted that in the 1600s and
1700s the apostrophe was not used in any English spellings of Irish
surnames. The apostrophe didn't appear until well into the 1800s.
In early English translations there was either a space between the "O"
or the "Mac" or it was just spelled as OKelly. Col
Charles O'Kelly in his book published in the late 1600s lists both
Kellys and Kelleys so clearly there were some who used the earlier
spelling.
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", "grand son 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. My research
indicates the double "e" spelling was the early English translation and
the single "e" was a later modern translation.
5
Question: Is our first American Ancestor
James or Thomas?
Answer: The
1782 Virginia Census for
Mecklenburg Co indicates our ancestor's name was William
and this is backed up by 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. The census only shows the head of household but because
Charles doesn't appear as a head of household in this census and we know
he was living in Mecklenburg at that time it seems likely that Charles
and his wife Mary, their young son William and daughter Elizabeth Dean
were four of the ten others living in the household of William at the
time of the head of household census. This is pretty good
evidence certainly greater than the belief that James or Thomas was our
ancestor.
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 a lot of 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 married 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.
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 which my DNA indicates we are related
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.
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 sex with a
woman. He wanted a male heir and had already put away one wife and
he asked the Pope to allow him to put away a second but when the Pope
refused, Henry VIII declared himself the head of the Roman Catholic
Churches in England and Ireland and because France and Spain were
Catholic and loyal to the Pope, 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 French and Spanish on his east. Not much really
changed when it came to 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 other than that 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. 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 to
settle their lands. This is the basis for the almost 400 years of
war in Ireland today between the Irish and England. After living
in Ireland for several generations some of the descendents of the Scotts
and English born in Ireland came to America as Scotts Irish. They
were certainly Irish born but most shared no blood lines with the true
Irish so they were not Irish in the true sense. DNA
indicates we came from the ancestral Irish, I share a common ancestor
with the current descendent of Hy Maine and since we seem to have
appeared in America as Protestant or following King Henry's and later
King James's version of the Christian faith and our first America born
ancestors were given very English given names like James, William,
Thomas, Charles, and Francis I suspect we came from one of the Irish
families that changed sides and went against our ancestors who would
have been Catholic. The reason our Irish family has been so
difficult to find is it is possible that because of our family's loyalty
to the English Kings that we may have been chased out of Ireland, many
were. It would certainly give our ancestor a reason not to want to
make his descendents aware of our family's Irish history but these were
very difficult times under the best of circumstances.
We have nothing to tell us about our ancestor who came to
America from Ireland, but because he came to Virginia which was at the
time an English protestant colony it would seem unlikely he would have
come willingly as a Catholic but I sometimes wonder if the reason we do
not find early bibles of our ancestors is because those early bibles
they may have had were Catholic bibles and later descendents destroyed
them to hide this truth but it is also possible that our early ancestors
did not have Catholic bibles because they were rare in America during
their time. There was and still is considerable friction between
the two religious groups. Nimrod, the grandson of our ancestor
stood trial murder in Oregon and those court records tell us that he was
a Catholic but his wife and children were protestant ut another
grandson, George Washington was listed on the roles as a Baptist
minister in 1813 so this seems very unclear.
It might be
of interest to some to know that while King Henry VIII commissioned one
of the first bibles written in the English language,
The
Great Bible.
King James had his bible created to appease the more conservative
mood in England that eventually got out of hand and for about a 20 year
period released a hell on earth by the way of Oliver Cromwell. For
those who would like a closer relationship between our current
government and the conservative religious movement in America, they
might want to go to their local library and read what life was like when
conservative religion ruled England, Ireland, and much of America for
that brief period of time. Because Christmas and Easter
celebrations were not in the bible, one could be fined or jailed when
found to be celebrating such. Even the possession of a mincemeat
pie was a crime in both England and America during that time because it
was a form of Christmas celebration. Cromwell and his religious
followers make bin laden and the Taliban appear as school children for
the numbers they murdered and let us not forget that in the 1690s Salem
Massachusetts hung 19 and crushed to death 1 of its innocent citizens
because conservative religion was permitted to go unchecked by reason
and logic. These are probably the reason our founding fathers
tried to protect us by keeping our government and our religion as far
apart as possible.