My grandfather, Thomas T. Kelly, has become something of a legend in our family. Among his offspring can be found a number of Thomas’s, Toms, Kellys, and Tom Kellys over several generations, and many of these would like to know more about their name-sake. Indeed, after Tom’s sister-in-law, Mary (Mame) Graham, married movie maker Patrick McGeeney, the McGeeneys named one of their twin sons Thomas Kelly.¹  As in many legends, however, numerous specific historic facts are missing or elusive, presenting a challenge in the construction of a smooth, cohesive biographical profile of this interesting gentleman.

My grandfather’s life and untimely death preceded my birth and that of my siblings, save for my sister Katherine, who was in early childhood when he died. He did not keep a diary or attempt to write a memoir which might have given us more insight into his life. Tom Kelly’s wife, Katherine, my grandmother, and their only child, Hazel, my mother, retained copies of death notices from the local papers. These obituaries provide a brief, condensed profile of his life. Katherine Scardino, my sister, visited the Kelly ancestral home in County Galway, Ireland some years ago and, over the years, has exchanged letters with some of the Kelly relatives and historians, notably Ann D. Kelly and Ethel J. Hunt. These letters provide snippets of information, mostly taken from local newspapers of the time that help to provide a picture, if somewhat fragmented, of Tom Kelly’s life.

When my son Danny and I visited Paola, Kansas, in November 2008, we were fortunate to obtain much useful information from Vera, a volunteer with the Miami County Historical and Genealogy Society, and that information provided clues to additional resources. From there we crossed the street obliquely to the very fine Paola public library and were provided with microfilm reels of local newspapers yielding additional nuggets. Patricia (Mrs. Richard) Kintz, in the process of researching her own lineage, has forwarded to me interesting fragments of Kelly history that I would not otherwise have uncovered. Mrs.Kintz and I share common great grandparents with the Grahams from the area of Wamego, Kansas. I am also grateful to Catholic churches in the areas where Tom Kelly had lived for providing vital information on birth, baptisms and marriages, information that, for the most part, predated the records available in civil institutions. We have also made use of stories we have heard from relatives and friends over the years and from my grandmother and my mother. Would that we had gleaned more information from these good women when we had that opportunity. As a result then, we have assembled a story that might be best characterized in part as “constructive conjecture” — some parts based on available facts, some based on his place in the history of his time and some, to the best of our knowledge and belief, based on what we have been told.

¹ Glenn Shirley, Purple Sage: The Exploits, Adventures and Writings of Patrick Sylvester McGeeney, pp. 58-59