This is the only book that I was familiar with in my youth, I first read my parent's book when I was about 14 years of age.  It was my first experience of a printed reference to my family as James and Lucy were my great, great grandparents.  Their grave sites are located about two miles from my childhood home and I had been to their graves with my parents many times.  They are buried in Love Cemetery next to my father's grandparents and because of where they lived I suspect they lived near Fine Springs which is where the Chastains who moved from Georgia about 50 years earilier lived.  J Fred mentions Alethea Jane Macon in his book as she mentions him so they knew each other and probably shared some research material. The reader may notice he is a single "e" spelling and that is because when his family moved from Northwest Arkansas even before he was born, they dropped the second "e" probably due to the influence of higher education.  Because his book does not bear the required by law Copyright notice at the time it was printed, it is legally in the public domain and I have released a pdf copy as to keep his work alive and available to the world.  I suspect that J Fred O'Kelly desired for his work to be replicated an explanation why he didn't place a copyright notice upon it.  You may download a copy of J Fred O'Kelly's 1966 book here but if you use it to provide to others, please credit J Fred O'Kelly as the author and source. 

J Fred does have a few errors in his book but in his defense to discover such errors were very difficult and expensive in the time he printed his book.  I can search much of our nation's archives with a click of a mouse.  On page 42 J Fred reports that Charles and Benjamin served on our Revolutionary War as Kelley but according to their records in our nation's archives they both served as Kelly.  He does however confirm what I have also found that our first Ancestors lived as a Kelley and returned the O to their name when they moved from Virginia and he touches briefly on the difficulties of the Irish in their homelands when they tired to use the O or Mac before their surnames.  He may have desired to spare descendants the full knowledge as to how difficult life truely was for our Irish Ancestors, how their day to day struggle to obtian food and avoid murder at the hands of the English probably was their motivation to leave their homeland. 

J Fred appears almost neutral  on ancestor's first name as he states he is "generally believed to be Thomas but others believe his name was James".  This gives us the earliest truth that before the books of Alethea Macon and Harold O'Kelley there was no evidence to determine the first name of our ancestor who came from Ireland.  I think J Fred gives us reasons to believe that information was unknown and there may not be any clear evidence even today to tell us for certain..  J Fred does speak about an ancient bible on page 44 of his book, "Mrs. Carl C Walker, Conyers Ga, a descendant of Francis and Delilah has an old family bible which contains proof that Charles and Francis Kelley of Mecklenburg Co Va were the same men as Charles and Francis O'Kelley of Oglethorpe Co Ga."  That bible has been located in the possession of Mrs Walker's son and it appears the evidence J Fred spoke of was the bible gives the marriage information for Francis O'Kelley and Delilah Crowder which the Mecklenburg VA marriage record  for Francis Kelley and Delilah Crowder thus proving the Mecklenburg Kelleys are the Oglethorpe O'Kelleys.

I have not been able to make contact with any of J Fred O'Kelly's descendants to learn if any of his research still exists, if it does I would recommend it be scanned and placed into digital form and shared with other O'Kelley Researchers.  I would be glad to host it on this website because I think J Fred O'Kellys work was a very important body of work that he would want to continue to new generations yet to come.  Webmaster:  Rick O'Kelley