Mary Kelly

The Marriage Register tells us that Thomas Kelly and Mary Cody had been married in the same church in the previous year on 1st February 1819 when Thomas Kelly was 18 years of age (going back further still we find that Thomas Kelly’s parents, John Kelly and Ellen Head had also been married in Moyglass Church on 16th June 1799). Thomas Kelly and Mary Cody reared their family of five boys and two girls on a very small plot of ground, less than half an acre, which looked across on Slievenamon mountain. The Kelly homestead in Clonbrogan, marked on the maps of the 1840’s, is long gone, but the Kelly story still arouses great interest both here in Ireland and in Australia where, later on, six of the seven Kelly children journeyed when they left their Tipperary home.