95, and What a Birthday it Was!!!
Today’s Trove Tuesday post doesn’t really require much text from me, as the article is self-explanatory.
The article below comes from the Australian Christian Commonwealth newspaper, and is dated Friday 2 September 1921. This article is about my 3x great grandma, Elizabeth Kelly (nee Gould) on her 95th birthday party.
NINETY-FIVE AND ENJOYS A BIRTHDAY PARTY!
Elizabeth Kelly (nee Gould)
A good old Methodist, in the person of Mrs. Elizabeth Kelly, celebrated her ninety-fifth birthday on Saturday, August 20. The members of her family gathered at Mr. Joseph Kelly’s home, Valmai Avenue, Clarence Park, to do her honour. During the afternoon numerous visitors called to pay their respect, amongst them being Mrs. Thyer, who is also ninety-five years of age and went to school with Mrs. Kelly at High Ham, Somersetshire, England. They met again some years later when both were young married women, and lived a few miles from each other at One Tree Hill. Mrs. Thyer moving to the Angaston district they lost sight of each other, and half a century later they meet again. It was interesting to note the pleasure with which they recalled incidents of their childhood days, and how solicitous they were for each other’s safety as they stepped off the verandah together.
Mrs. Kelly came to South Australia, with her father, the late Joseph Gould, in the “Prince Regent,” September; 1839, at the age of thirteen. She remembers well the discomfits of the journey to town in a spring dray, the cramped accommodation of Emigration Square, and all the incidents attendant on setting up a home in a new and young country.
Her father first took up land at Brown Hill Creek. Mr. Sleep, after whom Sleep’s Hill is named, used to conduct services in his house, and Mrs. Kelly attended them. She remembers hearing the late D. J. Draper preach his farewell sermon in the chapel in Gawler Place. Later they .moved to Cudlee Creek, and she sometimes walked nine miles to church. (Attention! young people, please).
She was married to Mr. William Kelly in Trinity Church by Dean Farrell in 1846, and they settled at One Tree Hill, where Mr. Kelly was a great help to the struggling Methodist cause, and assisted with the building of the church, under the leadership of the Rev. Joseph Lloyd. Mr. Kelly died in the year 1891.
Mrs. Kelly had eleven children, fifty grandchildren and seventy great-grandchildren. Mrs. Kelly is the proud possessor of a roll of honour in the form of a photographic group of thirteen
grandchildren who fought in the great war (three of whom did not return). The surviving members of the family are Mr. Joseph Kelly, late of Maitland, now of Clarence Park; Mrs. E. Linklater, Wilmington; Mrs. D. Harrington, Prospect ; Mrs. A. Adams, Smithfield; Mr. J. Gould Kelly, Riverton; Mrs. H. H. Blackham, One Tree Hill; Mr. E. A. Kelly, “Yelki,” Smithfield, and Mrs. E. H. Rhodes, Gilberton. Mrs. Kelly’s descendants are favourably known in many of our country circuits.
part of the article on Elizabeth Kelly’s 95th birthday
You can find the full original article on Trove here.
And just for reference, Elizabeth Kelly (nee Gould) lived on for another 3 years!
For more on the Gould family, have a read of this article on the Tea Tree Gully Historical Society website.
