Names stand for something or someone . . .

 . . . well, not always, as illustrated by all the Monopoly-property-named streets in our subdivision, but oftentimes, place names reflect folks who came that way at some point.

A recent subject at the New England Genealogical & Historical Society asked about landmarks, towns and sites named for our ancestors got me to listing such instances, and realizing we have many.  Here I will mention only some that the señor & I discovered in a visit to north Louisiana.

In Louisiana’s Catahoula Parish, Wallace Ridge, Wallace Lake & Means Lake are named for my 4-greats grandfather, James Wallace & my Means ancestors, James & Zachariah Means.  We have been to that locale a couple of times.  The first time we drove into Harrisonburg, we had no idea what to expect.  As we motored down the main street, we saw a restaurant called O’Kellys, and opined that it would be funny if we were related, of course thinking that was pretty improbable.  Unfortunately, the eatery was closed at the time, so we couldn’t pursue the matter.

As it turned out, we are indeed related - far-fetched though it may be.  As the governmental center of Catahoula Parish, Harrisonburg was our destination to do research in the parish records.  It was not long after querying staff there that we discovered O’Kelly’s proprietor was Jana Kelly, daughter of James Kelly and his wife Renae.  To say James was well known thereabouts would be an understatement: he was the Parish sheriff, and we were quickly put in touch with him.

We were soon invited to visit the Kellys at their home, and found them to be entertaining and easy to be with.  After all, we are kin, distant but family will out.  

The lineage from our host, James Glen Kelly continues to his father James Clinton Kelly, and on through John Routon Kelly, James Franklin Kelly, John Kelly to James Kelly (1794-1849) & his probable wife, Sarah Courtney (we haven’t proven her Courtney name yet), and they are our and the sheriff’s mutual ancestor.

Before I backtrack down our descendancy from James & Sarah, I will mention the alternate spelling of the moniker.  I used the “missing e” form for James’ ancestry because that is how they spell it.  Seems that somewhere in the past, someone now long gone got into a tiff with someone else now long gone and determined to distance himself by kicking out the “e”.

Our line down from James & Sarah is thus: James McGinneasy Kelley (1828-1920) & Eliza Amelia Means (1835-1887), John Frank Kelley (1854-1926) & Julia Travis Winans (1869-1957), James Zack Kelley (1890-1985) and my father, Ira Frank Kelley (1914-2009).

Since that first Louisiana sojourn, we’ve visited James & Renae a couple of times, and have greatly enjoyed our time with them.  James plays the guitar and Renae the piano, so it was a given that shared music would be part of our time with them.

There are volumes more I could write about our Kelley ancestors, but this post was ostensibly to be concerned about landmarks being named for our folks, so back to that.

James & Renae live right on the shore of a large body of water, a cut-off meander of the Ouachita River.  It is Wallace Lake, so called for our ancestors and kin who settled in that region: Amelia Wallace (ca. 1800-bef 1843) my three-greats grandmother, who married Zachariah Means (ca. 1796-bef. 1850), and her probable father James Wallace.  Zachariah Means was in Catahoula Parish as early as 1818.  

The cousins’ home is located on Wallace Ridge, a rise of land mere inches above the surrounding countryside and a community of the same name.  That “elevation” makes all the difference in that region that is scarcely above waterline.  Amelia’s father, James Wallace (1775ish-bef 1842), seems to have been there shortly after the turn of the 19th century.

I asked cousin James if he swam in that lake; after all, that was my immediate inclination.  With his usual humorous countenance, he replied, “I used to . . . until I saw an alligator in it”.

Not too far distant is another lake (water is far more common thereabouts than terra firma) called Means Lake, the third Catahoula landmark named for our ancestors.

Now about that water: those swampy lowlands are host to swarms of mosquitoes the like of which I have never seen.  That wouldn’t be the worst thing ever except that of course we wanted to survey the local burying ground.  Not only was our kin there, but so were seemingly generations of mosquitoes so thick you could cut through the hordes with a knife.  Needless to say, we did what we could clearing and photographing as fast as humanly possible.

A note completely off the subject: when we run across gravestones that are illegible, a common occurrence for old weathered ones, we have devised a way that seemingly miraculously reveals the lettering in most cases.  An example is in the next two photos.

We sprayed the stone lightly with shaving cream, then used a squeegie to wipe it down - ta da!  The words become clear so they can be photographed and preserved; we make sure to wash the stone afterward.

What an odd coincidence that both James Kelly, the Louisiana cousin, and James Kelley, my g.g. grandfather were both sheriffs — Catahoula Parish and San Saba County, Texas.  We own a photograph that we think may be our James Kelley (1828-1920), but are still working to prove or disprove that.  Surely someone somewhere must have an identified picture of him, but I have yet to locate it.

This is him . . . or it isn't.