Kelly Family Papers, bulk 1893-1946

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Abstract

John Forrest Kelly was born 28 March 1859 in the vicinity of Carrick-on-Suir, Ireland, the son of two Fenian schoolteachers, Jeremiah Kelly and Kate (née Forrest) Kelly, who hadeleven other children; he emigrated to America in 1873. He earned a PhD in electro-chemistry at age twenty-two, was an early research associate of Thomas Edison at Menlo Park, and then pioneered high-voltage A/C electricity generating and transmission systems. After accumulating over seventy patents, he spent his later life supporting the cause of Irish nationalism, for three years publicly as Massachusetts state council president of the Friends of Irish Freedom, but primarily behind the scenes, by writing anonymous articles and editorials for the Irish World. He died 15 October 1922 in Pittsfield. John Eoghan (pronounced Owen) Kelly was born 4 May 1896 to John Forrest Kelly and Helen Tischer Kelly in Pittsfield, Massachusetts; he died 18 June 1954 in Washington, D.C. John Eoghan was by profession a mining engineer with expertise in mercury, gold, and natural gas, and by avocation the principal U.S. lobbyist for Gen. Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War. When his business interests folded in the mid 1930s, he turned increasingly to writing as a means of support, primarily articles on foreign affairs, anticommunist politics, Mesoamerican and military history, Spanish culture, and mining, but also of biographies, short stories, novels, and poems. His advocacy of Franco's Nationalists at a time when the White House was supporting Madrid's Soviet-backed Republicans soon brought him to the notice of the FBI. In 1943, he became one of the first American citizens convicted for un-American activities, under a technicality of the Foreign Agents Registration Act. These papers also contain some of the only known extant archival material related to Dr. Gertrude B. Kelly, a significant figure in New York's history as a surgeon for the city's working class immigrant women, a professor at Women's Medical College, and an activist, writer, and orator in labor, Irish nationalist, and other radical movements.

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