Kelly Baker ancestors

Colonel O’Kelly
Let me take a leap here to one of the most legendary pieces of Kelly history from the region. When my uncle Peter Kelly visited Ireland in 1951, he met Louise Connolly, who gave him a copy of a note concerning her ancestor Colonel John Patrick O'Kelly who died in Falkirk in 1746.
[SLIDE] He also obtained a transcript of the fireside chat “One night in 1798” by Dirmud O'Kelly warning his sons and nephews of the dangers of taking up arms, and of the story of their pursuit by the Butcher Cumberland, as Duke was known, and of the gold they carried with them.

[SLIDE]The Falkirk documents mention four brothers, Patrick, Thomas, Diarmud and Morty, all sons of John Patrick O'Kelly. Dirmud's descendants are well accounted for by the O’Kelly Lynch descendants, and their story about how they ended up via various evictions and pursuits in Mullagh.
Dirmud, in the fireside chat of 1798, mentions his brotherThomas “who still lives at Dysart, twenty miles from here”. Peter Kelly's own research gives him 9 children. Our knowledge of Thomas stops there. Thats' all we know about him or his children.

The link with Thomas
Given that Jeremiah's father, Mr Kelly, was relatively well to do in the Ruan district, it is quite possible that his wealth is linked via land in Dysart to Thomas O’Kelly, one of the four brothers, who settled in Dysart in the late 1700s.
[SLIDE] In fact, Jeremiah's father could be Thomas's son, if we take into account the spacing of the generations, and the possession of gold in Thomas's family.

The trouble is, no one back in Ireland is left to ask after Jeremiah, since we are all over here. Jeremiah's ancestry does not seem to have been tracked as much as other realted branches of the Kellys: the O’Kelly-Lynches, or the Kellys of Kilmaley, or the Kellys of Bealnalicka.

When Jeremiah and Mary eloped and provoked the Old Testament style wrath of Bull Kelly, they came to Australia and brought forth a multitude, so to speak. And with this paternal defiance, perhaps they brought a rebellious streak to the Kellys which, you may have noticed, erupts every now and again in various families. Its not just the increase of Kelly clan population from 2 to 690 odd in six generations, but the kinds of achienemnts and preoccupations that they pursue – you could describe the Kellys her as magnanimous – not a fashionable word in current times – and now this multitude has extended the Irish diaspora into the diversity of culture that is this country.

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