BEDELL CEMETERY — This past Saturday, I had the honor of being invited to the unveiling of a marker dedicated to the memory of Revolutionary War veteran, Sylvenus Kelly. The Kelly family are indeed a remarkable group, among a remarkable group of families. I discovered a while back that there are families here in the Catskills with long memories. At screenings of "The Calico Rebellion," a film about the "Rent War", I've heard many people relate stories of their families which go back to that uprising in the early years of the 19th century. They knew details and stories and lines of relations passed down in family histories. But, the Calico Revolution was the last chapter in a struggle which began in 1776. As Randall Kelly relates, the Kelly part of the story of this part of the Catskills begins in the last years of the 17th century. " David Kelly (O' Killia), who came from Galway, Ireland ... settled in Cape Cod, Mass in 1655." He recalls with pride that Sylvenus was one of a number of Kellys who fought in the Revolution. Sylvenus' son, Randall's third back grandfather, Sniffen, defended the new nation fighting in the War of 1812. He tells me that his family built the nation in peace as well as war, "included the construction of a gristmill and dam across the East Branch of the Delaware River, creating Wawaka Lake in Halcottsville around 1805, the Round Barn... near Halcottsville and the Jonas More House whose Scottish relatives [Descendants of John More] were some of the earliest settlers in Roxbury. [The Jonas More House] was moved to the Fenimore Farm and Country Village in Cooperstown." Randall informs me that "John Burroughs, a famous naturalist from Roxbury, mother was Amy Kelly. "
Linda Kelly Armour opened the event. She and her family are a great recent example of building and preserving the culture of the Catskills. Linda organizes the Fleischmanns School reunion, and her father Hilton, grandfather Carson Kelly and Carson's father Ward Kelly, were major musicians passing down the fiddle tunes of this part of the Catskills.
These Kelly descendants link family after family in the region to the history of New York State. I had the pleasure and honor of meeting Kipp Cronk Van Aken. The Kips for whom he is named are the Kips of Kips Bay in Manhattan's East Side. They settled in New York City in 1630. They were the first Europeans in Rhinebeck. His branch later came to Lexington. The Cronks came to the New World in 1642, settling on Long Island. The Cronk family are descended from a bonded servant to the Hardenburgs. Yes, those Hardenburgs whose great house sits between Grand Gorge and Prattsville on State Highway 23, who were prominent among the targets of the Rent War. Both the Kips and the Cronks fought in the Revolution in the Dutchess County Militia. The Van Akens were in the Ulster County Militia.
It was glorious weather to gather to remember a man Diane Galusha reminded us, "was a patriot." She told the crowd of his descendants and their spouses, and one very humbled reporter, "when one third of his native Dutchess County, are believed to have actively sided with the British, he joined the militia early on in the fight for independence." Let's stop and think about that for a moment. Sylvenus Kelly joined a rebellion against one of the strongest nations on earth, on principle. The cause was the executive was not immune from the will and the needs of the people of what was to become the United States. Here, the patriots fought so that no leader was above the law and that law came from the democratic will of the people through their elected representatives to the legislature, the Continental Congress. In short, we the American people chose and fought that we would not follow the dictates of one man as leader.
Americans, in much of the country, have short family memories. Not in this graveyard today. There were Kellys, Cronks, Hubbells, all who were catching up and remembering how their families crossed and crossed again as they helped shape the Catskills of today, from the War of Independence to the Rent Wars, to memories of parents who married after returning from the world war against fascism. These families served and remembered. They were also built and preserved. The first speaker was Linda Kelly Armour. Her father and grandfather and great grandfather played a central role in the preservation of the dance music of this region. As they caught up and remembered who farmed where and when, they remembered who built which house still standing as a living testament to their pride of place.
"Sylvenus enlisted in the 7th Regiment of the Dutchess County Militia on October, 20, 1776," Diane said as his family stood silent in the sun, listening. She told us he was a ranger and was part of the search for British spies in the Hudson River area. They were also tasked with the protection of farms against Loyalists foraging for the British army at the expense of the sustenance of the farms of this region. Later in the 3rd Regiment, Sylvenus was a member when Governor Clinton ordered them to Peekskill to stop the advance of the British Army until Washington's Continental Army could arrive. He was then drafted into the Continental Army in which he served until 1782.
Diane's talk echoed what Randall said about other Kellys fighting to create this nation. "After the war, Sylvenus and three of his cousins, also veterans, made their way from the Hudson Valley to the still wild Catskills." She relates that there is evidence for at least forty Revolutionary War Veterans having lived in Middletown. For some, it was a stop on their post-war journeys; for others, they remained and are part of the ancestral founders of the families who created and now live in this part of the Catskills. Diane then asked several of the attending family members to read the names of the known veterans who were the pioneers of Middletown. There are names we still hear in our daily lives in this community, some who are also the ancestors of these Kelly descendants, Halcott, More, and Mead. The descendants of one family, Sylvenus', remembered all who fought for us. Diane credits Joe Kelly, Sylvenus' fourth down grandson with much of the early genealogical history of the Kellys.
Sylvenus died at seventy five years old, and was laid to rest in the graveyard where the new marker was being unveiled this day. It is easy to reduce the stories of those who fought to create this nation to names and dates and forget the painful hardships these people endured. They faced dangers from Loyalist neighbors and militias, as they fought against a professional war hardened army. But this large gathering of a huge number of descendants remind us that their sacrifices built communities which thrive today and a nation that owes them a debt of learning and remembering what this war was about and what it achieved.
It was a war against a king who had broken faith with the people of the American colonies. The start of the war which led the Kellys to risk so much began with a document which listed 27 things this king had done to break the contract between the leader and those who were meant to follow the law. Among those wrongs were attacks on the independence of the judiciary in these colonies. The King erased laws passed by representational legislators by executive order and he replaced government officials with others loyal only to him. He stopped the colonies from trading with the rest of the world. All these things made life unbearable for the revolutionaries and they risked everything to create a government where these wrongs were made illegal for leaders through specific laws in the Constitution. Life in the United States was shaped for protection of rights by the sacrifices of these ancestors.
The Kelly family went on to perfect these rights in the Rent War, and that's a story for another day. On this day family members met and spoke about their family's place in building the region and the nation.
