HelPeR - BYU Idaho Special Collections and Family History

Breaking Through SUCCESS STORIES WITH "BRICK WALL" SOLUTIONS
The Man Who
Would be Found
By Na n c y Ro n n i ng
It was about a week after he died in 1969, that I went
to my father’s apartment in Brooklyn, New York to
clear out his things. Because of a family situation I
really didn’t know him very well, and I knew little
about his family, except that his mother’s family had
come from Kildare in Ireland, and that her maiden
name was Kelly. But there, in that top, right hand
drawer of his chest on chest dresser, I found two
things. I found a ladies’ pocket watch, and the Civil
War discharge of Anson Kelly, private in the 17th
New York Regiment, born in Dublin, Ireland. Anson
Kelly was my father’s mother’s father—my greatgrandfather.
Life intervened. I married, had children, they grew
up and I grew older. Anson Kelly remained in the
background until a high school assignment brought
a question from my elder daughter. “I have to write
about an ancestor for History class,” she said. The
paper was due at the end of the semester. I quickly
wrote to the National Archives for Anson Kelly’s
military records and found that he had enlisted in
New York as a drummer boy after being rejected
in New Jersey “on account of my youth.” He fought
in the stalled Peninsular Campaign, and was shipped
to David’s Island to recuperate from illness due to
exposure during the long rain filled days and nights
on the muddy ground of tidal Virginia. The paper
got an A-, and more years passed. Anson Kelly was
shelved, if not forgotten.
When my daughter and her sister were both in
college and I was left with only the family dog, Anson
Kelly surfaced in my consciousness. Perhaps he
wanted to be found!
I began to look into genealogy, took a beginner’s
course, and joined the NYG&B. I found Anson Kelly
in the census at the New York Public Library (no Ancestry
at that time) and at NARA in New York City.
I am ashamed to admit it, but it was at that time that
I really read and reread every word of the pension
file, and finally, in 1998, sent to Trenton, New Jersey
for Anson’s death certificate. His cause of death was
blocked out (as per New Jersey regulations), but his
place of burial in Camden, New Jersey, was clearly
listed as Saint Patrick’s Cemetery.
By now, it was the age of the Internet, and I looked
for Saint Patrick’s Cemetery on the net. Nothing! How
Anson Kelly’s Civil War Service Discharge
could a cemetery in a major city be missing I joined
a New Jersey listserve and repeatedly asked for the
location of Saint Patrick’s. Nothing. Until one day I
received a response that explained that Saint Patrick’s
originally had been located behind the Cathedral in
Camden, but in order to make room for a new building,
all the bodies were moved to Calvary Cemetery
in Cherry Hill.
In the best tradition of the “Genealogy Road Trip,”
I packed the camera and headed for Cherry Hill. The
woman in the cemetery office was very kind, but
“No, there is no record of an Anson Kelly.” Unwilling
to get right back in the car, I roamed around for
a while and was about to leave when two cemetery
workers passed by and asked what I was looking for.
When I replied that I was looking for Anson Kelly,
but he was not buried there, one of them replied,
“Sure he is. I put a flag on his grave every Memorial
Day. The VFW people won’t do it because the Civil
War wasn’t a foreign war. But I don’t think that’s
right, so I do it.” I was amazed. How did he know
56 © Ev e r t o n’s Ge n e a l o g i c a l He l p e r Ja n ua ry/Fe b r u a r y 2009