Kelly Family

[cpalmer26]

My KELLY family would have been Protestant and Methodist.  In South Australia they were known to belong to "Primitive Methodist" church.
I would love to find anyone from Ireland who knows of William and Mary, who sailed to South Australia in 1850 with daughters Elizabeth (then about 3) and Dinah (about 1 year old) aboard the Trafalgar.  I have searched briefly for Elizabeth and Dinah in the births, but there were too many to search through quickly.
S.A. records show William born c 1819 in "Killarney/Leix/Queens Co." This baffles me as the map shows Killarney in Co. Kerry is in the south west, Leix/Laois/Queens Co. is in the midlands. Can anyone shed any light on this please?
Someone from S.A. Genealogy here in Adelaide has done a project on the Trafalgar immigrants, but couldn't find this family at the time.
Carolyn

[shanew147]

......
S.A. records show William born c 1819 in "Killarney/Leix/Queens Co." This baffles me as the map shows Killarney in Co. Kerry is in the south west, Leix/Laois/Queens Co. is in the midlands. Can anyone shed any light on this please?
...

Killarney is a town in Co. Kerry, but there are also several townlands with the same name in counties throughout Ireland (e.g. Wicklow, Kilkenny & Roscommon). None that I see are located in Co. Laois (Queens).

See the townland database at : www.thecore.com/seanruad


Shane

[cpalmer26]

Thanks Shane,
I had wondered whether Kilkenny may have been misread as Killarney. Carolyn

[shanew147]

Thanks Shane,
I had wondered whether Kilkenny may have been misread as Killarney. Carolyn

Kilkenny doesn't really fit with with the  "Leix/Queens Co." part of the place name, as it's a separate county... although it's a neighbour of Co. Laois.

maybe it would an idea to post an image extract of the document in question, showing this placename to see if anyone can decipher it ?



Shane

[cpalmer26]

Thanks for that. It is printed in a book "Biographical index of South Australians" so someone has already collected it as information and it has been printed as such. I don't know the original source. Carolyn

[shanew147]

It would be worth trying to trace whatever Australian BMD certs you can find for the family, to see if you can gather any further clues regarding location and other details.

Kelly is a very common surname in Ireland, it was the second most popular surname after Murphy in the 1890s. To trace your particular family you will need all the documented clues you can find to ensure you follow the correct line.


Shane

[DamonC]

Im also a descendant of the aformentioned Kelly family.

William and Mary Kelly. The only original source ive found in South Australia was the passenger list that says Queens County.
One issue is a maiden name for Mary... I tried looking for birth certificates in Australia for the 2 children born there. Isabella and William James. Isabellas birth doesnt have Mary's maiden name. The issue for WJ (b1857) is that there are 3 ppl with the same name that ended up in the Saddleworth area.
One WJ born in Clare in 1857 in Clare is listed in some ppls ancestry tree is the right one. However birth records say his mother is Margaret Miller. Whilst Margaret and Mary are at least interchangeable in my Scottish research it seems less likely. The other born Gawler Plains (like Clare is realistic for someone ending up in Saddleworth) has a mother listed as Mary Dunn. I found a marriage record for William Kelly and Mary Dunn in Queens County Ireland. So i think this is very possibly the right people. Also noteable is that in South Australia they were associated with the Methodist church. The Irish marriage was also protestant rather than Catholic. see attached.

Then, ive got my father to do a DNA test via ancestry and this links with several people descendant from William and Mary Kelly as expected. I also searched for the above surnames and didnt really get anything for Miller but loads of Dunn results, again, not conclusive but lends weight to the theory.. Whats very interesting is that there are a couple matches with people that in their trees are descended from a different set of Kelly's. Initially not so surprising given that its a popular name. However i see that there is also a William James Kelly in their family tree i initially thought it was the one born in Clare but this fella was born in 1860 in Adelaide and then had a child Richard J Kelly in Saddleworth. So there are now 3 WJ Kellys in the one small town!
I cant say for sure that my relation to this person is via this Kelly link but i cant see anything else in their seemingly well researched tree that gives any other possibility.
So, theres the possiblity that some of the different Kelly's in Saddleworth are infact related.

[DamonC]

Then also, the shipslist original version lists a James Kelly as having paid the deposit for the passage of William and Mary Kelly to South Australia on the 1849 Trafalgar.

Thinking that James Kelly is a relative that had already migrated. A quick look shows there are multiple James Kelly's that migrated prior to 1849. One of which ended up in Riverton, but he was Scottish not Irish. Still trying to work that out but records are spotty.