| Notes |
- The following was found at the Wartburg Public Library, in a Kelly Family folder. I do not know who wrote or donated it, but it appearsto have been an interview, with Lillie Kelly, abt. 1983.
"REMEMBERANCE"
Many family stories have been shared on a summer evening on the Kelly porch, or around the warmth of the old fire-place on a winter night: The story of Malinda Hall Kelly, who rode her horse through the Union lines to the grave of her husband; About Lillie's grandfather, Daniel Kelly, who escaped from a Union prison in Kentucky and walked all the way home to Beech Fork; How her Grandmother Stonecipher, a tiny little woman knocked her churn from the hands of a soldier who had snatched it; And stories told by John Kelly about his World War I experiencesas an American Soldier in Russia.
The funeral for Lillie Myrtle Kelly, who would have been 98 on July 21, was Friday, May 2nd at the Union Baptist Church in the Joyner community.
Miss Kelly, a member of a pioneer Morgan County family, died Wednesday, April 30th, at her home on Beech Fork Creek, Route 1, Wartburt, in the room where she was born in 1888.
The last of the eight children of Samuel Walker and Julia Ann Stonecipher Kelly, she had lived all her life on the Kelly farm in the three-story log-house, built, according to a family historian, in 1814, by her maternal grat-grandfather, Ezra Stonecipher. The old house, a landmark in the area, is the oldest building in Morgan County, but the hand-hewn poplar logs have been covered with siding many years.
Miss Kelly, three other sprinster sisters and a bachelor brother, ran the farm after the death of the father in 1922. Each family member had certain chores on the farm and Lillie's task was the care of the milk and butter and doing the pastry baking. Early in her life she worked for a year or two as a clerk in one of the coal company stores in Petros.
After the death of her sister Delia in 1969 Miss Kelly lived alone at the old home and was able to do her housework until a year ago when she suffered a fractured hip in a fall. It was then that a great-nephew, J.D. McCartt and his wife, moved into the home to care for her.
Miss Kelly enjoyed visitors and liked to show them through the old home. She had a keen memory and kept up with the happenings of the day and had a good knowledge of the history of Morgan County.
On May 29, 1983, she was honored at a reunion of the Kelly families at the old home. Over 350 attended and Miss Kelly thoroughly enjoyed the day sitting most of the time on the front porch and speaking to as many of the clan as possible.
She was a lifelong member of the Union Baptist Church and her funeral was the first to be held in the new church building located on the site of the old Joyner School and on property at one time a part of the Kelly farm. Rev. William Hancock, pastor of the congregation, officiated. Interment was in the Union Cemetery.
Schubert Funeral Home was in charge of arrangements.
Besides the three other spinster sisters, Mary, who died in 1957, Nancy in 1965, Delia in 1957 and the bachelor brother, John H. who died in 1958, there were two other brothers: Douglas, who died in 1964, and Hampton who died in 1901, and a sister, Docie (Mrs. Welda) Heidel, whose death was in 1983.
The only immediate survivors are eight nieces and seven nephews: Vida Heidle McCartt, Mildred Heidle Brazel, Glena Dean Heidle Hutson, Catherine Kelly Terry, Daisy Kelly Brooks, and Francis Kelly Whaley; Wade, Frank, Clyde A. and Burt Kelly, and Robert Lee, Browder and W.H. Heidle.
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1888 - 1986 (97 years)
Siblings
