Karla Cardell and Thia have inspired me to post once again. There are just too darned many James Kellys passing through eastern NC and Southern Georgia for there to be no connection. I am looking for James (middle unknown) Kelly who died and was buried in 1910 in Valdosta, GA. He is the father of John McNeill Kelly, born 21 Jan 1875 in Clarkton, NC. James was apparently in Clarkton in both the 1860 and 1870 censi, but disappears in 1880 and reappears in Georgia in 1890. James' other children included William, Donald, Claude, Jeanette, Mary and Margaret. William, founder of Consolidated Naval Stores and early partner in Barnett Banks, is apparently buried in Jacksonville, where he died in the 1930s. Claude became a physician who lived and and died in Hartford, CT. Jeanette (sp?) married a ? West. She died in 1961 and is buried in Valdosta, GA also. Mary married a Hugenot doctor Van de Erve (sp?) of Charleston, SC. The others are lost to me. Since the missing patriarch and at least one childe are buried in Valdosta, I feel a trip is in the works. Does anyone on the list live near enough to Valdosta to check records or can anyone give me an online lead to follow? John M.'s is line that leads to me through his decendants who settled in the panhandle of Florida and in the West Palm Beach area. There is a tradition (not supported by any documentation I've been able to find) that my Kellys have carried the McNeill middle name and the McNeills have used Kelly as a middle or Christian name ever since the two families were joined in marriage in the early or mid 1800s in North Carolina. It is rumored that we are all of the same lineage of James Abbott McNeill Whistler, the American painter (Whistler's Mother - study in black and white?). Guess work has connected the families in the Brown Marsh/Clarkton area, just west of Wilmington. (Whistler's grandfather was a Dr. McNeill who moved to Wilmington from Scotland.) I have some bible records of some Scotch-Irish Kellys and McNeills from that part of the country; if you'd like me to trace a particular line, I would be happy to. Ernie Kelly Orlando