Origins

Origins . . . now there’s a word to get a person musing.   Maybe it brings to mind the Garden of Eden story - how it all began - or is it just whence we each came.  In my case, there seems to be no end when I begin the wondering about my origins.  

For some, it might be wanting to know about parents or grands; I’ve got that much and so much more covered, but there’s a strong need to delve deeper - how do I fit in with those who came before.  With the knowing comes a sense of continuity, a feeling of understanding where and how I belong.

In the beginning . . .

It’s interesting to remember the assumptions with which I approached tracing my ancestry and the señor’s.  We were relatively clueless, although on his side, there was knowledge about one aspect of his lineage - the Van Burens.  That made sense because of the family pride in its relationship to the president even though it was not a direct descendancy.

That left a lot of uncharted territory, though, with much of it getting into the morass of Scandinavian names - maddening to put it mildly - but regarding my own lineage, I had little to go on, so it was easy to make naive assumptions.

For me, and I suspect for many others, my natal name carries a sense of deep identity, a knowing of who I am, even though I knew little of its background.  And that’s where assumptions entered the picture.

I was born a Kelley and that has always been my identity, despite taking my husband’s name primarily so I would share a surname with my children.  I and my siblings blithely assumed that made us Irish; it somehow did not occur to us that Mom contributed half of what made us us - that came later.

So . . . to begin, I knew that my father hailed from Texas, a very large chunk of real estate about which I knew little except that it was a very large chunk of real estate.  Second assumption beyond the Irish bit was potato famine immigrants arriving through Galveston.

Turns out, not surprisingly, that neither of those were accurate (later DNA testing put the Irish percentage very low).  My ancestral Kelleys were in the United States long before the tragedy of the Great Potato Famine of 1845-1852, during which untold numbers of Irish suffered terribly and died from starvation.  

We’ve visited the homes, ranches & final resting places of our Texas Kelley ancestors in San Saba, Edwards & Lamb counties, but . . .

. . . Before Texas . . .

It wasn’t too long until we discovered that our bunch hailed from Louisiana prior to arriving in Texas, so the assumed Galveston immigration point was out.  We even motored on back there, arriving in Harrisonburg, where we saw a restaurant by the name of “O’Kelly’s”.  Haha, we thought how funny it would be if that was our relatives.  Well, guess what - it actually was, to our great surprise.

A few inquiries later, we hit the mother lode when we not only met cousins, but found a warm welcome into the extended clan . . .

. . . but I’ve gone off the track regarding my origins, at least as far as tracing my Kelleys back in time.

Lo, these many years later, we are nowheresville with my birth surname.  We know that my great great grandfather, James McGinneasy Kelley’s father, also James Kelley, was born in 1794 in Illinois (or possibly Pennsylvania), later landing in the south - Catahoula Parish, Louisiana.  We’ve even done on-site searching in the Illinois locale, but I remain clueless about how he/they arrived there, or when/where they came to these shores.

In my defense at so far failing to track these forebears, the Kelley name is the Smith of old Eire; throw a rock and you’re bound to hit one, but sadly, which is which and which is mine remains a mystery to me.