Katy Kelly Research

 Kate Kelly was from North Robinson, Ohio, just west of Crestline.  She moved to Heyworth, Illinois as a teenager, with her family,  including her older sister Mary.  She and her sister were demonstrators/trainers of circular sock knitting machines with Franz and Pope Company in Bucyrus, Ohio for many years and presumably travelled by train.   

It was Sunday.   I had been attending COWS (Crankers of Wonderful Socks) in Monticello, Illinois. The event was over and most everyone had said goodbye.  There was no UCC church in Monticello.  So I visited the local Presbyterian church in honor of Katy Kelly, as her lifelong membership was mentioned in her obituary.   Surprisingly, the liturgy followed the format almost word for word,  that was traditional (not to mention repetitive) in the 1960's-1970's UCC church I attended in Crestline as a child.  

I visited the railroad museum after church.  You can see Bucyrus Ohio, where Franz and Pope was located, on the far east side of the 1890's railroad map I found in the museum.  I tried to trace a direct line from Bucyrus to Heyworth on the map.  A straight line west from Bucyrus, roughly paralleling the route I took on the Lincoln Highway, would have put them at Gilman.  To get to Heyworth by train, they would have had to go further west on the train they were on to maybe El Paso, then head south.  This map dates from the 1910, though, so it is possible that these rail lines did not exist when Stephen Kelly migrated west in 1881. 

Kelley family move to illinois

Article from Mar 4, 1881 Bucyrus Journal (Bucyrus, Ohio)

 

The article states that the entire town of North Robinson gathered at the depot, despite the cold rain, so I am assuming they travelled by railroad. 

 

Katy's husband was a farmer, and her sister married a state senator.  I had no trouble finding the cemetery in Heyworth and no trouble finding their stones.  

I also found the stone for Stephen Kelly, their father.  It was on the other side of my car seen in the background above, about four rows in. 

I also noticed a very large memorial stone with "Rutledge" name on it.  I assumed that the size meant they were promiment members of the community. 

It's maybe the same size town as Crestline. I ate a very reasonably-priced and delicious hamburger in Heyworth at one of the two restaurants. 

Yesterday I visited the historical museum in Bloomington, Illinois. The area where I am staying in Bloomington is quite a contrast to the small towns of Monticello and Heyworth.  It is more like Hall Road in Macomb, Michigan.  In contrast, the Bloomington home of Katy Kelly, where she spent her last years, was a quiet residential street next to the Grove Street Historic District where many Victorian mansions have been preserved.  Katy's spacious home appears to have been converted into apartments. 

Katy Kelly McComb's home

Mansion next door to McComb home.

I spent several hours at the historical museum. I probably exceeded the 90-minute parking limit, but since I was legally parked in a handicapped space, the signage did not indicate a time limit.  Luckily I did not get a ticket. 

When the Kellys first moved to McLean county in 1881, Stephen Kelly landed in Randolph Township. Unfortunately the available atlases were published in 1875 and 1894.  He passed away in 1889.  So if he did own land, it would not have been shown on the plat maps for either of those years.  He could have also been a tenant farmer, or even lived in town.   If I want to dig further I will have to visit the government offices.  

 I found a plat map in an atlas in the gift shop, marked "for display only", showing J B McComb, Katy's husband,  in Downs Township, McLean County.  The farm was just on the edge of Downs township, next to LeRoy Township. 

The museum had a display devoted to farming in McLean county.  It was quite interesting, there was a small "tractor seat" theatre that showed the evolution of farms from small holdings with wheat, oats, corn, beans, and lots of livestock like chickens, pigs, beef, dairy and horses to today's corn/soybean rotation with little livestock.  The coming of the tractor meant that draft animals like Percheron horses and and oxen weren't needed on the farm, and the advent of the automobile meant that harness horses were no longer needed.  The wheat and oat crops previously raised for livestock feed were not needed as livestock husbandry moved to feedlots and industrial poultry operations.  

I noticed that the lithographs used in the film were very similar to the ones in my 1873 Atlas of Crawford County, Ohio and I presumed that they were taken from a similar atlast for McLean County, perhaps the one I had seen in the gift shop. 

I then spent some time in the research library in the museum, but really didn't find anything of note.  

On Tuesday I visited the Heyworth Library, where I spoke with Sunny, a volunteer. She turned out to be also the historian of the local Presbyterian church, so I explained what I was doing and she said she would see if she could find anything.  She gave me a few resources, which are also available online. I asked about the Rutledges (the family with the large memorial stone.)  I had noticed in one of my newspaper clippings that Mrs. J. B. McComb (aka Katy Kelly) had been the hostess of a meeting of the Rutledge Social Club.  I asked Sunny and she wasn't sure who the Rutledges were.

 I spent some time comparing Google Maps to the Plat map showing the J. B. McComb farm.  It seemed to me that perhaps the I-74 highway had been built in the railroad right-of-way. 

Then I drove out to the spot where I thought the farm might have been.  There was nothing there except corn and soybeans.   I drove to the spot where the road dividing the townships of Randolph and LeRoy crossed over I-74 for a higher vantage point over the flat landscape. 

"Prairie Madness" is a condition that was described by Willa Cather in her novel "Oh Pioneers!"  I found a reference in Wikipedia and also the link to an article in "The Daily Beast' that refers to the novel.  

    "Prairie madness was caused by the isolation and tough living conditions on the prairie. The level of isolation depended on the topography and geography of the region. Most examples of prairie madness come from the Great Plains region. One explanation for these high levels of isolation was the Homestead Act of 1862. This act stipulated that a person would be given a tract of 160 acres if they were able to live on it and make something out of it in a five-year period. The farms of the Homestead Act were at least half a mile apart, but usually much more. Although there were thriving Indigenous nations and communities, there was little settlement of Europeans on the Plains and settlers had to be almost completely self-sufficient.

The lack of quick and easily available transportation was also a cause of prairie madness; settlers were far apart from one another and they could not see their neighbors or get to town easily. (In many areas, towns were usually located along the railroads and 10–20 miles (16–32 km) apart—close enough for people to bring their goods to market within a day's travel, but not close enough for most people to see town on more than an infrequent basis. This particularly applied to women who were often left behind to tend to family and farm while the men went to town.) Those who had family back on the East coast could not visit their families without embarking on a long journey. Settlers were very alone. This isolation also caused problems with medical care; it took such a long time to get to the farms that when children fell sick they frequently died. This caused a lot of trauma for the parents, and contributed to prairie madness. "   Wikipedia, downloaded 7/30/2023 1:22 pm. 

I remember that my own mother had a copy of Cather's "My Antonia" on her headboard of her bed.  She had come to an Ohio farm of 80 acres (half an original land grant) when she married my father, having met him on the beach in Jacksonville when he was in the Navy. Ohio's landscape is not nearly as flat as the Great Plains, being in the foothills of the Appalachies, but she still was quite isolated, on a farm six miles from town, away from her family and friends.  To make regular long-distance calls to Florida at that time was not in our family's budget.  My father's sisters did welcome her, and she joined the local Extension homemaker's club, church,  and the monthly township council meeting, but the bulk of her days were spent alone with four children and no car until the late 1960's.  

I have to wonder if some of Kate Kelly's work with Franz and Pope was a way of coping with the loneliness of the farm land.  She could hop onto a railroad and be in Philadelphia in 10 hours. 

Tuesday night I ate dinner at the Epiphany Farms restaurant in downtown Bloomington.  An anonymous benefactor paid my bill, making me feel grateful, and also a little concerned about my possibly disheveled appearance.  Did I look like I was in need? 

I visited LeRoy on Wednesday, the last day before returning home. The library in LeRoy is a new building, built in classical style.  The upstairs is the library, and below, in the basement, is the historical museum.  The librarians were quite helpful.  In fact they pointed me to some scrapbooks kept in the library which are not available online, and in one of them were newspaper clippings about the Rutledge Social club.  It was the oldest social club in McLean County, and was organized for the purpose of doing good work and providing a social outlet.   I thought about my mother's experience with the Homemaker's club. 

The librarians also tipped me to the fact that the historical museum was not always open, but it happened that the docent was available that day.  So I interrupted my library research to visit the historical museum.  The docent was quite glad to see me, it seems that she did not get a lot of visitors.  But she was able to provide me with the original copy of several books.  I made sure that they were also available electronically online, and snapped a photo of the cover plate to let me research them more thoroughly at home. 

I had been suffering with a cough for the last several days.  I had planned on following my visit in McLean county with a stop on the way home to ride with some fellow cyclists, but I decided that it would be too difficult with my coughing and the weather forecast of 100+ heat index and the planned 50-mile ride each day.  So I texted in my regrets and drove home.