Shelleys in America

Shelley is an English-origin name. But there are some 14,000 Shelleys in America, more than twice the number in England. How come?

Possible Factors

One factor has been the Anglicization of foreign names by immigrants either on their entry into the United States or with the next generation. German names such as “Schille” or “Schelle” became Shelley in America. So at times did the Irish “Shealy.”

Secondly, there were and are African American Shelleys, either from the south or from immigrant West Indian families.  The mid nineteenth century censuses also recorded Cherokee Indians in Tennessee and Oklahoma with the Shelley name.

One African American Shelley rose to prominence as a result of a celebrated court case. In 1930, JD Shelley, his wife and six children migrated to St. Louis from Mississippi to escape the racial oppression of the South. But racial apartheid existed in St. Louis as well. In trying to buy a house, the Shelleys discovered that many of the buildings they looked at were governed by racially restrictive covenants. They eventually found someone who would sell them a house. However, their purchase was challenged. In a case that found its way to the US Supreme Court in 1948, their right to purchase under the Fourteenth Amendment was established in a memorable ruling. Their modest two-story house has now been designated as a historical landmark.

Immigration

Shelleys have left England for the New World for various reasons since the early seventeenth century.

Virginia.  Henry Shelley, a gentleman from Chislehurst in Kent, sailed from London on the Sea Venture in 1609 in a mission to re-establish contact with the English colony at Jamestown, Virginia. However, their vessel was shipwrecked off Bermuda (tales of which formed the basis of Shakespeare’s play, The Tempest), and, arriving at Jamestown a year later and finding few colonists left, they promptly returned home. Walter Shelley did stay but died of fever in 1619. John Shelley, who came later, survived the climate and the Indian uprisings and became a settler. In 1632, Robert Shelley from Nazeing in Essex left on the Lyon for Boston. He too survived.

South Carolina.  A century later, South Carolina provided a more long-lasting Shelley settlement. This area was attracting a mishmash of immigrants; wealthy individuals who were granted large tracts of land, indentured servants looking for a new start, and criminals just seeking to escape punishment.

Some English colonists, arriving in Charleston in the 1760’s, moved northeast to the swamplands along the Pee Dee river, building rough cabins there and clearing out land for farming.  William Shelley must have been an early arrival.  The 1776 Roster of Revolutionary Soldiers shows that he was drafted from this area.  Serious settlement of what is now called Marion County did not begin until the war was over and the Indians had dispersed. The 1786 tax rolls list William and Joseph Shelley as smallholders. And Shelleys have been farming this land ever since.

They still do.  Johnny Shelley’s tobacco farm at Nichols in Marion County won a conservation award in 2002.  He, like his forebears, is a member of the Pleasant View Baptist Church.  The church cemetery lists 356 names of which 82 are Shelleys.

Shelleys also moved northwest to what is now Barnwell County. A Luke Shelley is listed in the 1790 census. He died in 1823 (making a gift on his death-bed of his two slaves to his grandson). Descendents of these Shelleys migrated first to Georgiaand then to SE Alabama. This settlement, called Tumbleton, began in the 1890's when Reuben Shelley and his family purchased land six miles northeast of Headland. Shelley's garage, first erected in 1921, is still a prominent local landmark. And a Reuben Shelley is the mayor of present-day Headland.

North Carolina.  There are records of Shelleys in North Carolina in the 1770's and in east Tennessee (which was formed out of North Carolina) a decade or so later.  James Shelley settled in Gap Creek, Tennessee.  His descendants later migrated to Missouri and Arkansas.

Jacob Shelley headed south to Talladega County in Alabama.  His nephew, Charles M. Shelley, was a Confederate general during the Civil War.  After the war, he moved to Selma where he was a town builder and later became active in state politics. 

Pennsylvania.  Economic opportunity was one motive for immigration, escape from religious persecution another. This applied in particular to the Mennonites from Germany and Switzerland who, from the 1730's, began arriving in Pennsylvania under the religious freedom afforded by William Penn. In this migration, Germanic names such as Schoelli and Schille became Shelley in America.  One immigrant, Abraham Shelley, settled in what is now Milford Township in Bucks County.  His descendants are still to be found in this area today.

Another singular Shelley record of this non-English immigration can be seen in the cemetery records of the descendents of immigrant Jacob Shelley. In the 1770's, his son Daniel uprooted his wife and four children from Lancaster County (plus three horses, four cows, and twelve sheep) to settle in what is now called Shelley's Island on the Susquehanna river. Here they formed a self-contained community. These Shelleys were apparently prolific. Daniel himself is said to have had four wives and eighteen children. The Shelley cemetery on the island, overshadowed now by the Three Mile Island nuclear plant nearby, contains close to a hundred gravestones of this remarkable family buried there over the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Some Shelleys settled in Pennsylvania, others moved inland to Indiana, or joined wagon-trains as the West opened up.

Iowa.  Shelleys were to be found in Iowa from the 1840's  Michael Shelley arrived there from Ireland in the 1860’s.  He had a daughter who achieved national renown for a feat of heroism (as the inscription on her plaque reveals):

“Here is a deed bound for legend. A story to be told until the last order fades and the last rail rusts. On the night of July 9 1881, Kate Shelley, then a girl of 15, prevented the Chicago-bound express train, with 200 passengers aboard, from plunging into a raging torrent after the Honey Creek bridge had collapsed. Her heroism saved the train and led to the rescue of survivors.”

Crawling on her hands and knees across the Des Moines bridge, she managed to reach the Moingona station ahead of the impending disaster and alert the station master.

Fame, sadly, brought her no reward.  Fifteen years later she was listed as destitute and with the added responsibility of caring for her aged mother and invalid brother.  Belatedly the railroad stepped in and looked after her over the rest of her life.

The Oregon Trail.  Michael Shelley (who was Dutch by origin) and his wife Sena went over the Oregon Trail from Illinois with a team of oxen and milch cows in 1848.  Their hardships were great.  Not all survived this hazardous journey.  Michael's father died of cholera on the Platte river.  As did George Shelley, four years later on the same wagon route.  But others in his family carried on to start a new life in Oregon.

Salt Lake, Utah.  A driving factor in this westward movement of people was the Mormon Church. In 1840, the first Mormon missionaries came to England with the task of recruiting converts to emigrate and boost Church numbers in America. They set up their stall in the Victorian towns of northern England and in the pottery towns of Staffordshire. Many converts, with financial assistance from the church, made the voyage. Among the early emigrants from the Staffordshire region were James Bowyer Shelley, his son Thomas, and their family of 14 who sailed from Liverpool in January 1851.

Thomas kept a journal of the nine month voyage via packet ship, steamboat, and wagon-train to the new Mormon settlement in Salt Lake valley, Utah.  Thomas wrote in his diary: “We entered into the valley on October 3. I saw Brother Brigham for the first time and rejoiced much that I had been counted worthy to be gathered with the Saints of God.” Other Shelley converts followed, some settling in Utah and others spreading the Mormon faith elsewhere in the West. The small town of Shelley in Idaho is named after its first settler, John F. Shelley, who moved there from Utah in 1885.

New Mexico.  There were also Shelleys as cattle ranchers in New Mexico by the turn of the century.  The family-run 916 ranch at Cliff in Grant County has been handed down by Hattie Shelley through four generations.to the present day.  

California.  Jack Shelley was - like Kate Shelley - from Irish roots, born in 1905 the eldest of nine of a working class Irish family in San Francisco.  He rose through trade union ranks and a career in the US Congress to be mayor of San Francisco during the turbulent 1960's. 

Shelleys Today

Shelleys, some of English origin and some from elsewhere, have spread throughout the United States.

But old history still influences the distribution. The South Carolina settlements in the eighteenth century and the Mormon migrations in the nineteenth impact where Shelleys reside today.

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