Preston County, West Virginia Biography of JOHN W. KELLEY This biography was submitted by Valerie Crook, E-mail address: ********************************************** ***The submitter does not have a connection*** ********to the subject of this sketch.******** ********************************************** This file may be freely copied by individuals and non-profit organizations for their private use. All other rights reserved. Any other use, including publication, storage in a retrieval system, or transmission by electronic, mechanical, or other means requires the written approval of the file's author. This file is part of the WVGenWeb Archives. If you arrived here inside a frame or from a link from somewhere else, our front door is at http://www.usgwarchives.net/wv/wvfiles.htm The History of West Virginia, Old and New Published 1923, The American Historical Society, Inc., Chicago and New York, Volume II, pg. 560 Preston JOHN W. KELLEY, of Terra Alta, now retired, was one of the youngest soldiers recruited for service in the Union Army during the Civil war, and the half century or more since the war he has usefully employed in the work and business for which his training and qualifications best fitted him. For a number of years he was in public service in Preston County. Mr. Kelley was born in Preston County, in Pleasant Dis- trict, July 14, 1847. He is a great-grandson of a native of Ireland, who on coming to this country settled in Old Vir- ginia. While there he enlisted with the volunteers in the War of 1812. In one battle he was struck by a bullet in the forehead, which passed backward, lodging just under the skin on the top of his head. The bullet remained plainly visible, but he declined to have it removed, saying that he wished to carry a British bullet to his grave, and he did. This old soldier ancestor came to Western Virginia after the war, establishing his home in the northern part of Preston County, then Monongalia County, and he was laid to rest on the soil of the farm where he settled. Edwin Kelley, father of John W. Kelley, was born in Pleasant District and was a prosperous farmer there. He died in 1857, at the age of forty-six years. He married Ann Falkenstein, whose parents, Mr. and Mrs. Ludwig Falken- stein, came from Germany soon after their marriage. Mrs. Ann Kelley survived her husband until 1901. Her children were Harrison, Smith, Lucy, James A., Dovie Jane, who became the wife of Sylvester Stockman, John W., Ellis, Margaret, who married Harrison Shaw, and Marshall. One other son, James A., was a Union soldier and lost his life when struck by a falling limb. John W. Kelley was reared near Cranesville and had only the limited educational advantages of the country schools there. He never attended a free school. Of this period of his life he recalls one old log cabin schoolhouse with paper window lights, slab benches, an iron stove known as the ten plate stove, and there were no such modern facilities as maps, charts or globes, though a tough hickory stick stood in the corner close to the hand of the master, and many times he saw boys punished with this implement to the extent that the blood came. Mr. Kelley studied the old speller, the first reader, and some arithmetic, but no geography or grammar. The schoolmasters of that time could usually read, write and cipher, but were not more advanced than their best pupils. John W. Kelley was only thirteen years of age when the Civil war broke out. He was unable to get into the service until September, 1864, when he became a volunteer recruit of Company F, Seventeenth West Virginia Infantry, joining at Wheeling and serving under Captain Morris Snyder and Colonel Davis. During the remaining months of the war his command was in the southwestern part of West Virginia, scouting and skirmishing, and his regiment was at Bull Town, Braxton County, when the news of Lee's surrender arrived. A few days later the regiment moved on to Clarks- burg and then to Wheeling to be discharged, July 9, 1865. Mr. Kelley received his discharge while in the hospital, and he was unable to work during the remainder of that summer. During the next eight or nine years he remained on the home farm, spending his winters in the cooperage industry and the rest of the year in the fields. The first year of his married life he spent at Cranesville, and then moved to a farm in the Craborchard community, where he steadily followed agriculture for many years. Mr. Kelley left the farm to become superintendent of the County Home, serving eight years, and leaving that office in April, 1920. Since then he has been retired at Terra Alta. In February, 1874, Mr. Kelley married Margaret Record, daughter of Lewis Record. She was born in Preston County and died in 1913. She was the mother of four children: W. Fletcher, of Terra Alta, married Lena Benson, and their children are Darwin, Dade and Carlet; B. Harrison, of Masontown, married Jessie Carico, and their family consists of Mary, James, Helen and William; Dessie is the wife of George Hahn, of Morgantown; Howard, the youngest child, died unmarried at the age of twenty-three. In Preston County in July, 1917, John W. Kelley married Mary Conner, who was born in Preston County in 1867, one of the nine children, eight surviving, of Benjamin and Mary Ann (Feather) Conner. Mr. Kelley grew up under conditions that naturally inclined him to support the republican party. As a soldier in the field he accepted the privilege of voting for Abraham Lincoln in 1864, though he was only past seventeen years of age, and, curiously enough, when the next general election came around in 1868 he was not old enough to be accorded the privilege of the ballot. He has been a stanch Methodist for over fifty years, and is one of the Official Board of the Terra Alta church. Mr. Kelley is affiliated with the Knights of Pythias and with the D. O. K. K., and for his faithful membership of a quarter of a century wears a veteran's jewel of that order.