Series 6 - Kelly family letters

2 sub-series

Martin J. Kelly of Celbridge, County Kildare donated copies of the Kelly family letters to Kerby A. Miller for reproduction in January 1978, and provided permission to publish the letters via letter of 28 February 1990.

The Kelly family letters are a set of 63 letters written by members of the Kelly-O'Rourke family in Galveston, Texas to their family in Cregameen, County Roscommon between 1893 and 1970.
Following their maternal uncles Richard and James (O’) Rourke to Texas, brothers Martin Kelly Jnr and Patt Kelly were the first of the Kelly siblings to emigrate to Galveston in the early 1890s. The brothers worked for their uncle James and his wife Annie who owned a grocery and liquor store. Patt Kelly drowned in Galveston Bay in 1897; Martin Jnr held himself responsible as he was the one who brought Patt out to Texas. Martin Jnr would eventually take over Richard O’Rourke’s liquor wholesale business and become a major figure in the Galveston community. Other siblings – John, Jane, Agnes, and Delia – also joined Martin Jnr in Galveston. After John’s death in 1916, Martin Jnr stopped writing home save for one letter in 1918. Letters written from the 1920s onward are largely from the three sisters writing home to their brother Peter. Agnes, the last survivor of the Kellys, continued writing through the 1960s and into 1970 to Peter’s widow Mary Kate and her nephew Martin Joe. By this time, Agnes notes in her letters the loss of many of her American relatives' Irish identity over the decades.
The series consists of full transcripts and reproductions of the 63 Kelly-O’Rourke letters, as well as research on the Kelly family, most importantly an original copy of Martin J. Kelly’s The History of the Kelly Family of Cregameen, Castlerea, Co. Roscommon and Other Related Families (1980).