Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Luck o' the Manx

The first decade of my life I believed my Greats on the Kelly side were from Ireland, but alas I found out they were actually from the Isle of Man. (IOM) 

Between the main UK land and Ireland, IOM is a small island  in the middle of the Irish Sea. It is a democratic self governing island, but is a "Crown Dependency" which makes it part of the UK. I nearly visited this past fall after setting it up with a distant cousin that exchanges letters with my parents. However, I missed the connecting train to the UK from Brussels, Belguim because of a transportation strike. 
Gotta love those Europeans.

The potato famine in the mid 19th century affected the Manx as well as the Irish, so when Mormon missionaries came and converted them, they were all too happy to take the ship across the sea to the promised land of America. 

Good ol' John Kelly, his wife Elizabeth Quine were taught the Gospel by John Taylor, Elder Hiram Clark, and William C. Mitchell who  had traveled the 80 miles by ship from Liverpool, England to the small island in September of 1840. Taylor had roots on the island as his wife, Leonora Cannon Taylor, was born in Peel on the IOM. 

The Kelly family eventually landed on their feet (like all proper Manxmen) in Nauvoo, Illinois and their son William Edward Kelly made the trek by wagon to Utah eventually settling in American Fork. 

The picture below is "The Three Legs of Man." An ancient symbol of independence the motto QUOCUNQUE JECERIS STABIT translated means "Whichever Way You Throw Me I Stand."
See full size image

2 comments:

  1. still sad we missed that train! gotta love the 3 legged symbol though!!! kisses*

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  2. I like that. And the symbol rocks.

    About adding the church info button to your blog, as I recall, I just clicked on gadgets, then on "add java script, html," then pasted the html code into the blank and saved it.

    To find button options, you can just google "blog buttons for Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints." Then copy the html code they give you for the button you choose (there are lots of them out there) so you can paste it on your blog as described above.

    Anyway, great post! Great history!!

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