Author: Kelly, Thomas
Biography:
KELLY, Thomas (1769-1855: DIB)
He was born at Kellyville, near Athy in County Kildare, to the Rt. Hon. Justice Thomas Kelly and his wife Frances Hickey. He studied at Trinity College Dublin, earning his BA in 1789 and proceeding to the Inner Temple in London. Kelly eventually chose to enter the church rather than pursue a career in law and he was ordained in the Church of Ireland in 1791. The evangelical views held by him and three other clergymen led to a ban on their preaching in Dublin. Kelly and one of the other men, John Walker, established their own meeting houses and had numerous followers. Kelly, unlike Walker, maintained connections with the Church of Ireland even after his formal secession in 1803. Using financial resources from his family and his 1795 marriage to Elizabeth Tighe, he established a network of meeting houses throughout the south-east. Their heyday of popularity was in the 1820s. By the 1840s most had closed although Kelly continued to preach in his Dublin chapel until he suffered a stroke in 1854. He died at Dublin, survived by his wife and at least two daughters. His hymns were very popular and continued to be published until the late nineteenth century. (DIB 21 Apr. 2021; ancestry.co.uk 21 Apr. 2021)