O'Kelley Irish History

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The progenitor of our family line is reported to be Ceallach who died in 874 and was Chief of Ui Maine but our family line can be traced back to Maine Mor who lived around 350 AD in Ireland or hundreds of years before Ceallach.  Ceallach's grandson Murchadh Ua Ceallaig is believed to be the first to use the Gaelic spelling of our name or Ua Ceallaigh meaning grandson of Kelley.  Not all Kelleys descended from the Ui Maine line.  There are other independent lines of Kelleys in Ireland, Scotland, and England and it is likely that only a DNA test will prove one is include or exclude from the Ui Maine line. 

Ireland was Christianized between the 5th and 7th century but before that time our ancestors were Druids.  They were Druids far longer than my ancestors have been Christian.  Druids or pagans were not devil worshipers as many wrongly are led to believe, pagans had a reverence for the natural world and many of our most common medicines can from such people but even when Christianity was introduced into Ireland, the native Irish followed a blended faith mixing some of their Druid wisdom with Christianity.  They embraced some Christian teachings and beliefs while also embracing some of their ancestral reverence for the natural forces of our world because this was critical to the survival of a people that saw starvation as a companion.  Living on the edge of civilization far from the central influence and power of Christianity the Irish Christian church developed as a Celtic Church.  Because fertility was necessary to survival Irish Catholic Priest were often married and had children just one example as to how the Druid reverence for human fertility extended into Irish Christian beliefs.

For at least two millennia our ancestors lived and sometimes ruled over  an area of about 1000 sq miles come to be known as Ui Maine Ireland.  The ruling male of our family would be known as "The O'Kelley" and when he also ruled over Ui Maine he was known as the Chief of Ui Maine.  The English called these Chief's "Captains" and one will find many O'Kelleys listed as Captains meaning they were the head of their clan.  The Irish would sometimes preselect successors so when the Chief of their clan died the successor was already selected and ready to step in; these successors were called tannest.  What might shock most is how violent the Christian world was.  All over Europe considerable ignorance and cruelty existed even among those who were considered to  be most Godly.  Living on the edge of civilization, the O'Kelleys were not immune and we find they often took part in the traditions that today we would judge to be very cruel and uncivilized.  Most marriages were arranged or bartered and occurred when a father saw a benefit either financial or military to marrying his daughter to a neighboring clan.  The Irish Gentry class were allowed and often did take more than one wife and if he tired of her he held the right to return her and any children she bore back to her maternal family.  They also practiced foster although I have yet to understand it purpose; where they would send their children to live with another noble family or sometimes grandparents and it wasn't uncommon for the fostered children to take on the name of their fostering mother and father.  Perhaps a custom that is surprising is it was common practice for ruling families to exchange their eldest sons to be held as hostages  to keep the peace between the two ruling clans.  Often is was the elder son that was exchanged and those hostage sons would be married to the daughters of the hostage holding family to further strengthen clan alliances.   Because the Irish surnames described the descendents relationship to the head of the clann it wasn't uncommon for the children fathered by a hostage male to take their mother's name.  This pratice causes considerable confusion when one is using DNA to try to track their male family line because they may bear the surname name of a long ago and forgotten maternal ancestor but carry the DNA of a different male line.  Please read my DNA page if you wish further details .

We are fortunate that at least two written Gaelic Manuscripts were created over time to document our family, the Ui Maine O'Kelleys.  The earliest was the Book of Lecan  believed to have been created between 1397 and 1418 and Roger O'Farrell's 1709 Linea Antiqua, manuscripts that Dr John O'Donovan translated from to publish his book in English in 1843 titled "The Tribes and Customs of Hy-Many: Commonly called O'Kellys Country".  For those unfamiliar, this book is not just about the Ui Maine O'Kelleys, there are some other related lines that branched from the Maine Mor line before Ceallach was born or a few generations after he lived and in the back of Dr. O'Donovan's book is a large chart showing the relationships of the Ui Maine O'Kelleys and other related lines.  Dr O'Donovan's book is widely available on line on the Internet or you can purchase a reprinted copy on line at Amazon at this link: The Tribes and Customs of Hy-many, Commonly Called OKellys Country.

As one reads Dr. O'Donovan's book they began to see just how violent the lives or our ancestors were.  Son's killed their fathers, fathers killed their sons, brothers killed brothers and if that wasn't enough the neighboring clans were always seeking advantage or waging war.  The chief employment was as a soldier and the most common method to gain wealth was to take it by force from someone who had it.  Lives were often short and ended in violent ways but in spite of this the Irish did seem to have time to raise crops and children and living in the west and heart of Ireland the O'Kelleys managed to avoid some of the troubles visited upon Ireland by their British cousins.  While some might think this way of life was limited to the Irish but that was the way of the European Christian world, a world troubled by ignorance, superstitions, plagues, droughts, and floods.  Winters were long and deadly forcing the raising of the recently dead for use as food and when that food source was exhausted, mother's served up their children in an effort of survival for the rest of the family. It was indeed a very hard life and only those willing to do what was necessary for survival made it.  Source: "The Short History of Ireland" by Dr Johnathan Bardon.

Ireland endured two foreign invasions during the time of the O'Kelleys.  The Vikings came in near the end of the 8th century to raid and plunder and then returned again and again establishing townlands such as Dublin.  Over the next two hundred years, the a tug of war existed between the Irish and the Vikings but it all came to an end in favor of the Irish at the battle of Clontarf in 1014.   The Vikings were defeated but many Gaelic Irish lords died to gain the victory.  Tadhg Mor Ua Ceallaigh was one of those who died in that battle and for almost 200 years the Irish were once again in control of their homeland, but that control was short lived. DNA makes it a certainty that we descended from one of the sons of Tadhg Mor Ua Ceallaigh and it is believed that our family crest originated from their father's death at that battle. 

The invasion of Ireland by William the Conqueror in the 11th century changed Ireland and the O'Kelley's future forever.  Before this time the Irish mostly lived in rural towns or farms but the Normans established cities.  Galway was established by what became know at the 14 tribes of Galway and other Viking towns such as Dublin grew into Norman cities with great castles.  With William the English had come to stay and over time crowd out the Irish but over the next 500 years the "Old English" as they came to be known embraced the Irish and some say they became more Irish than the Irish.  We can see their influence within our O'Kelley family as Dr. O'Donovan's book documents marriages of O'Kelley's to the Burkes, one of the Gentry Old English families.

No single event in Ireland had a greater impact on the O'Kelley's of Ui Maine than King Henry VIIIs split with Rome.  While I am certain the protestant reformation was more about diverting church tithes paid by the English and Irish to Rome from the pope's purse and into King Henry's purse the common people suffered greatly during the centuries of religious reform.  Some of the wealthiest men in both kingdoms at that time were Catholic ministers and this money was blocked from their pockets and placed in the pockets of protestant ministers convincing me that the "reformation" was nothing but a war of greed a war purchased by the blood of innocent men, women, and children seeking only to scratch out a living and live what time allotted to them but that was not to be.  King Henry's actions set Ireland and our O'Kelley ancestors upon a war that would last for centuries and in Northern Ireland continues today. 

We give great reverence to King James and his Bible but that bible was created as a political state document.   The protestant bible of choice was the Geneva Bible but that bible had comments in its margins that were less than friendly towards the royal families so King James commissioned and used state funds to pay for his bible which was friendly towards earthly Kings and Queens.  Once that bible was created it because a crime of treason to be within the lands under King James control and posses a bible other than his.  This was the life of our O'Kelley ancestors.

It can not be known how the Scots Irish who were protestant settlers from Scotland and England that moved to mostly northern Ireland at the encouragement of King James, impacted our family.  Certainly the native Irish who were forced out of their ancestral lands in the east and the north and crowded into western Ireland putting considerable pressure upon our ancestors living in Ui Maine in western and central Ireland.  What does seem certain is most of the Ui Maine O'Kelleys remained Catholic and over time due mostly to the penal laws passed by the protestants in the early 1700s they were forced into poverty.  But there are records to show that the Gaelic Gentry class of O'Kelleys, a small number who ruled over the land that belonged to the clan that some of those represented in Dr. O'Donovan's 1843 book that at least three ruling lines including The O'Kelley of the clan agreed in 1585 to be as English.  In 1601 Colla O'Kelley the 7th Lord of Screen also accepted such an agreement with Queen Elizabeth and it details conversion to the protestant faith and dropping the O from the name as two of several conditions placed upon Colla.  We also find in Charles Bridger's 1867 book titled  "An Index to Printed Pedigrees: Contained in County and Local Histories" that these O'Kelleys spelled their name as we do and I am certain this is how all the Gaelic Gentry O'Kelleys spelled their name in English before 1600 because the English language would have made this a certainty.  So the world changed forever for all the Irish after this time.  The old Irish ways of clan ownership of the land was abolished forever and replaced with the English system of individual land ownership but the Irish were not through, in 1690 with the support of France and Spain the Irish united under the Jacobite banner and behind deposed catholic English King James II to try to drive the protestant English from their country once and for all.  Many O'Kelleys were killed at the battle of Aughrim in  July1691 and when the war ended by treaty it was reported that as many as 25 O'Kelley Gentry left Ireland and went to France.  I have to think that our ancestor's father was probably not among those who went to France because if they were protestant they would have found France a dangerous and difficult place for an Irish protestant.  I think it is likely they were encouraged by the English to remain after all the English wanted to retain the protestant Irish who were loyal to the English cause mostly to aid them in ruling over the Irish Catholic peasants but by 1750 most O'Kelleys even a sizeable number of the Irish Gentry class had been dispossessed of most of their land.

So how did our ancestry come from Ireland as a protestant?  I suspect he or his family had close ties, probably business ties to the protestant English.  Quakerism and Huguenots were present in Ireland at the time of our ancestor's birth.  It has been claimed as many at 10'000 French Huguenots settled in Ireland so there were pockets of protestants in Ireland actively trying to convert the Irish Catholics and both groups made it possible for a number of native Irish to come to America but many records were created by all groups and I have yet to find any records to document that our ancestry came in such a way or was even religious.  Few Kelleys  or Kellys appear on the membership rolls of any religious group during the time our ancestor  would have lived in Virginia so if he arrived in America as a protestant as Macon and other authors claim he and his family kept a very low profile.  I think it may be more likely that he arrived as a protestant because he had little other choice and that is why I do not find our ancestor on any of the church records of his day.