How do you spell Kelly?

[Research Journal #5, Entry #10]

I set off to find the Kelly's in Massachusetts. But guess what? There weren't there! All the Martin Kelly/Kelley's were a wash. What to do? What to do?

I decided that there had to be a problem with the surname. Online census indexes are notorious for creative transcription. I had my choice of two states: New Hampshire and Massachusetts. Since I knew they were in New Hampshire in 1849, I started there.

I put in the search Martin Kel*. (* is the wild card. It means find me everything that starts Kel but has a different ending) I got:
Martin Kelby
Martin Kellohor
Martin Kelley
Martin Kellogg
Martin Kelly
Martin Kelton

Neither of the Martin Kelly's were mine. Martin Kelby might be worth a look, so I clicked on him. Aha! There's my guy. His surname is written as Kelley as clear as day, but the transcriber saw Kelby.

The family was in Manchester, Hillsboro Co., NH.
Martin Kelley, 22, Laborer, Ireland
Catherine, 20, Laborer, Ireland
Margaret 9/12, New Hampshire

I now know that the Kelly's were in New Hampshire as early as 1849. They were there in 1850. And, the for some reason they migrated to Massachusetts by 1852. Possibly following work or relatives. Then by 1856, they were in San Francisco where they set up shop as horse traders and boarding house managers. The Kelly's sure did get around!

The multiple migrations made research a bit tricky especially with the family being in San Francisco before 1906. Most normal records were destroyed. We learned a couple of things:
1. City directories are important to mapping out where a person was between census years.
2. Church have much more to offer besides baptismal and marriage records. The Monitor, a Catholic newspaper, provided an obituary which replaced the lost death certificate.
3. Newspapers can provide information when vital records (birth, death, and marriage) are unavailable.
4. Even with common surnames like Kelly, you must be on the alert for misspellings in records and in indexes. The alternate spelling Kelley was in my mind but certainly not Kelby!
5. Don't assume you know where your ancestors were at a certain time. I thought for sure the Kelly's were in Massachusetts in 1850. If I hadn't given New Hampshire a second shot, I would have missed them.

And We're Back at the Census

Since I came up with nothing in the 1880 census for San Francisco and the 1850 Census for New Hampshire, I decided to revisit the 1870 and 1860 census. I was pretty sure my family was in San Francisco at that time. As long as they didn’t avoid census enumerators, I should be able to find them.

My first attempt was to find Martin and Catherine Kelly in 1870. Much to my chagrin, there were two Martin Kelly’s married to Catherine’s living in San Francisco! Hopefully, it would be very clear.

One of the families was mine! All the children were there, including Margaret, who shouldn’t have been. She had married a year before the census. However, I've seen married children listed with their parents before. Perhaps it's a misunderstanding of "how many children do you have living with you?".

According to the 1870 census, they had a child born in CA ca 1856. So, that clearly means the family was in San Francisco for the 1860 Census. I took a look through the soundex and found the Kelly's in San Francisco in 1860. The birth information on the 1870 and 1860 census confirmed that I had another locality to deal with. The family didn't migrate from New Hampshire to California. They took a side trip to Massachusetts where a couple of children were born. With any luck, I would find them in Massachusetts in the 1850 census.

Here are the children and where they were born:
Margaret 1849 NH
Catherine 1852 MA
Michael 1853 MA
John 1856 CA
Mary 1859 CA
Winifred 1860 CA
Matthew 1862 CA
Ellen 1866 CA
Josephine 1872 CA

It is still possible that the family was in New Hampshire and that I was looking for the wrong thing. Only time and more research would tell.