A Baltimore Family

The Civil War broke out in 1861. William Arthur Kelly served in the Union Navy as Fireman First Class on board the USS Maratanza. He married Charlotte Seward, daughter of Captain John Seward, in Baltimore on a license taken out on 7 October 1861, a marriage that would last 58 years until his death in 1920. According to family history as received by my grandfather from William Arthur Kelly himself, ships the family owned were confiscated and pressed into service by the Union Navy. Those would be Captain Seward's ships. The story was cast by William Arthur Kelly to anyone who would listen as "the United States Government owes us money!" Or at least that's how it's been passed down to us.

Charlotte Seward was born on 8 May 1843. In 1900 and again in 1910 the United States Census asked how many children had been born of each woman in the country, and how many were still alive. In 1900 Charlotte reported 12 children with 5 living; in 1910 she reported 13 with 4 living, my great-grandfather being the casualty during the 19-aughts. She didn't have another baby between 1900 and 1910, being in her late 50s and 60s at the time. The difference probably revolves around whether to count an earlier miscarriage. If that's the case, a full accounting of their children should include a dozen names.

We know 10 of them. 8 were listed in their parents' household in the 1870, 1880 and/or 1900 censuses. The other four lived out their lives between censuses. We have names for two of the four because the family placed death notices in the Baltimore Sun, which turned up in the search engine at a web site specializing in genealogy.
YearDateChild's nameDeath
1863JanuaryWilliam E Kelly 6 April 1865 of croup
1864
1865
1866
1867
1868MayLaura Virginia Kelly 9 March 1919 (no poem for Lolly)
1869
1870JanuaryWilliam E Kelly 11 November 1872 of diptheria
1871
1872MarchLilly May Kelly 12 April 1891 of pneumonia after a 5 month illness (no poem for Lilly)
1873
187414 FebruaryEliza Jane KellyOct 1968
1875
187615 JuneAlice Kelly 17 October 1879
1877
1878FebruaryWilliam Arthur Kelly Jr 22 September 1907 (no poem for Will either)
1879
18807 FebruaryAlice M Kelly 21 June 1880
1881
1882
1883
188431 DecemberEdward James KellyUnknown to me
1885
188614 OctoberMahlon Grant Kelly18 January 1952


I laid this out as a time line to show when the missing babies might have been born - early in the marriage, between the first William and Laura, and again between the second Alice and Edward. Charlotte could easily have had two children in the first span, with a little under 2 years between births, let's say in the fall of 1864 and the summer of 1866. In partial corroboration of this, the April 1865 death notice for the first William implies that he had a sister, describing him as the only son of William and Charlotte A Kelly. Whatever children were born in that span lived very brief lives - the only children recorded in the 1870 census were Laura and the ill-fated second William. As for the second span, a child born in 1882 could have lived into the early weeks of 1900 without us knowing about it. The 1890 census was destroyed by a fire in 1921.

The dated links in the "Death" column bring up images of death notices published in the Baltimore Sun. The death notices for the four who died as children include poems written by the family, a very touching family tradition started by William and Charlotte in 1865. When the first Alice died in 1879, it was left to her sisters to write the poem. It seems they got some help from their father's cousin Mary (married name unknown), daughter of Ezekiel Badger Jr, who had written this in February 1974 for her late brother Charlie Badger. Laura continued the tradition for her daughter Natalie Brown, who died at the age of 12 in 1908.

The reuse of names is striking - there were at least 3 Williams and 2 Alices in the family. Lilly was named most directly after the daughter of another of William Arthur Kelly's cousins, Thomas Badger, son of Joseph. Lilly May Badger died at the age of 1 on April 5, 1871, and Lilly May Kelly was born within a year. If the Kellys (and Badgers) of Baltimore adhered as strictly as it seems to naming babies after dead siblings, then it's likely that the sister implied in the first William Kelly death notice was also named Lilly.

This family was dealt more than its share of tragedy. William and Charlotte Kelly buried 9 children between 1865 and 1919. During Charlotte's childbearing years they dealt with each loss in part by writing a poem and giving the deceased child's name to the next child born of the appropriate gender. I'm convinced there are poems out there for the children we don't have names for, the problem is finding them. UPDATE: There was no poem in Lilly's death notice, who died in her late teens.

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