Nathan Kelley - Family Name and History

Family Name and History

As is typical of the time period, there was little consistency in the spelling of personal names. In various sources, it is spelled either Kelley or Kelly. Burial records from Green Lawn Cemetery and his daughter's tombstone there, as well as his grandfather’s biography from an early history of Warren County have it as Kelley, while his obituary in a Columbus newspaper and his own signature on working drawings omit the final ‘e’ and spell the name Kelly. In some sources he is also known as N.B. Kelley.

Kelley was of Anglo-Irish heritage, his great-grandfather John Kelley leaving Belfast, Ireland to settle in New Castle, Delaware. The architect was named for his paternal grandfather, Nathan Kelley (1760–1845), who left Delaware to head west, first to south western Pennsylvania, where he married Hannah Miller, and then to Warren County in what was then the Northwest Territory. The elder Nathan was a prosperous farmer who served the area as justice of the peace, appeals court judge and state representative. Nathan B. Kelley was the third of 8 children born to James Miller Kelley and Rebecca Ludlum Kelley. The Ludlum line can be traced back to Derbyshire, England. The Kelley family had a demonstrated habit of sharing names among generations and branches of the family, so that Nathan had both uncles and brothers with the same names. He had a nephew, Nathan Kelley Hufford, named in his honor. His elder brothers Thomas Jefferson Kelley and George Washington Kelley demonstrate the patriotic zeal felt in the still young nation.

Kelley's younger brother James Finley Kelley (1816–1894) was also a resident of Columbus, Ohio, where with his wife, the former Eliza Van Horn, he raised three children: Albert (b.1845), a railroad brakeman, Virginia (b.1857), a school teacher, and Rebecca (b.1859). Census records list James? F. Kelley as a pattern maker and metal foundry supervisor, so it is likely he was involved in the statehouse project in some capacity.