El
Dorado County
Biographies
ALEXANDER KELLEY
Alexander Kelley, of El Dorado,
dates his arrival in California in the year 1852. Following is a resume of his life history:
Alexander Kelley was born in
Hopkins, New York, January 6, 1830, and is descended from Scotch ancestors who
were among the early settlers of Vermont.
His grandfather Kelley fought for independence in the Revolutionary
War. Alexander Kelley, the father of the
subject of this sketch, was born in Vermont and was married in New England to
Miss Mary Davis, a native of Boston, Massachusetts. The removed successively to Pennsylvania,
Ohio, Missouri and Iowa, and finally to Utah and Idaho. Previous to their removal to the far west
they were converted to the Mormon faith.
The father reached the ripe old age of eighty-six years. The mother was seventy-four when she died,
her death occurring at Ogden, Utah. They
were the parents of seven children, of whom four are living, Alexander and
William D. being the only ones in California.
George Kelley, an older brother, was in the Mexican War, and at its
close came to California and was discharged in Los Angeles. He was at Sutter’s Fort and at Coloma when
gold was discovered, and worked there until the following summer. Then with a company of sixty he left for
Utah. This party was well armed, having
three of General Sutter’s guns with them, and they opened the route across the
mountains. At Tragedy Springs they had a
fight with the Indians, in which three of the party, Cox, Bruitt
and Allen, were killed. In 1851 George
Kelley met his parents and other members of the family at Salt Lake. He returned to California the same year, was
engaged in different pursuits here, and during the gold excitement in Idaho went
to that place. He was never afterward
heard from.
Alexander Kelley, the subject of this
sketch, passed his youth and early manhood in the different places where his
parents lived, as above indicated. It
was in 1848 that they crossed the plains to Salt Lake. He remained in that city
with his parents until 1852, engaged in farming and stock raising,
and that year came to California.
Arrived here, he engaged in mining in Tuolumne County, where he
continued the occupation three years, with but little success, however. Often he was within eight or ten feet of a
rich vein, but he never made more than fair wages in the mines. He mined, at intervals, until 1860. He spent some time in the Red Woods in Napa
County, getting out timber, and afterward made a trip to Caron Valley, where he
remained three years. He has since been
a resident of El Dorado, where he has a home and is comfortably situated and is
now retired from active life.
Mr. Kelley has been twice
married. By his first wife, whom he
wedded in 1853, he had three children, namely:
William, of Placer County; Mary, now Mrs. John Robertson; and Henry, a
rancher near El Dorado. In 1884 Mr.
Kelley married Mrs. White, his present wife, and they have one son, Alexander
Budd, a resident of El Dorado County.
During the Civil War Mr. Kelley was
a Union man and a Republican, but after the war he returned to the rank of
Democracy, where he is now found. He has
seen much of pioneer life, has done his full share toward “blazing the way for
settlement and development,” and enjoys the high respect and esteem accorded to
the worthy frontiersman.
Transcribed by
Gerald Iaquinta.
Source:
“A Volume of Memoirs and Genealogy of Representative Citizens of Northern
California”, Pages 626-627. Chicago Standard Genealogical Publishing Co. 1901.
© 2010
Gerald Iaquinta.
Golden
Nugget Library's El Dorado County Biographies