KELSEY FAMILY

ENOS AND NANCY KELSEY	ROBERT AND SUSANNAH ELDER	STEIS	WHITE
JONAS AND SARAH KELSEY		JOSEPH AND MAGDELINE STEIS
WILLIAM AND HELENA KELSEY Photos from Scott Thomas Photos from David Thomas Photos from Charles Kelsey Photos from Roberta Thomas

William E. Kelsey was born August 14, 1835 and was a Doctor in Monterey Indiana. His son Arthur Kelsey was also a doctor as was his son Lawrence Kelsey.

It has been said that William Kelsey was run over by a train in 1930, apparently because he was hard of hearing, but that is not necessarily the case.

Helena Steis was born April 13, 1860 at Logansport Indiana, daughter of Joseph Steis and Magdeline White. She died Sept  1938 and is buried at the Monterey Catholic Cementary. She was married to William in 1877 (looks like she was 18, he was 47).

From Charles Kelsey, July 2010: William was a radical republican, to the point of being comical. He was a gentleman farmer and owned a ranch 7 miles north of Monterey. He had lots of cattle and horses. He bougth the horses wild from Wyoming and resold them a couple years later after they settled down. There is a story of a time when some man was angry about the horse he bought from old doc Kelsey, and told Charlie Keiter, the bank president, that he was going to kill the Doc if he ever saw him. Just then Doc Kelsey walked into the bank office and Charlie said, 'Well there he is'. The angry man said to Doc Kelsey, 'I'm going to kill you because of that hores you sold me.' The Doc replied, 'When I deliveredy you, I held you in my arms and said to your mother, you might as well feed this one to the hogs, he won't amount to anything.' That was the end of the converstion. Another time, Doc was inspecting a ditch that was being cleaned out on his ranch. As he always did he walked down the muddy ditch as part of his inspection. To play a joke on him the workers had dug a deep hole in the ditch, which the Doc fell into. However instead of getting mad, he climbed out and continued the inspection, ruining the fun. He read all the time, never took his cloths off to go to bed, probably a practice developed to be able to quickly respond to a medical emergency. He just took his shoes off, sleeping hin his shirt (with cellophane buttons), socks and pants. Wore a suit till it wore off then ordered a new one from Montgomery Ward. He did a lot of experimental farming, bringing alphalfa to Monterey. Bought potash from germany (it had sulpher) to raise potatoes. He bought Guanno from S. America. He brought in carp, a luxury fish at the time, but he lost them in a flood. He planted trees on all the farms he bought, apple, cherry, pears, peach. He lost his ranch (and everything) during the depression. He didn't have money to pay the taxes and it was auctioned off. When he lost everything he wrote a note in his day journal how he was at a point in his life that he didn't know what to do. Shortly afterwards he was hit by the train, for unknown reasons. Montery was originally a spanish town, it had the name Buena Vista,  indians were living on the south side of town in the 1860's. There were 2 towns with the same name in the state so they flipped a coin to decide which town had to change their name, Monterey lost the flip and they changed the name to Monterey.  During the depression they used to have square dancing every Saturday night, and then a free movie, projected on a wall in the street, everyone brought their own chairs.

A partial transcript of his daily journal: Journal of W.E. Kelsey Sr.

page 758, Tippecanoe Township, Pulaski County, Indiana.

"DR. WILLIAM KELSEY was born in Perry County, Ohio, August 14, 1835; is the son of JONAS and SARAH (ELDER) KELSEY, and is one of a family of four children, named CYRUS, MARY, WILLIAM and ELIZA. The father was born in Perry County in 1810; he has chiefly farmed, but in 1849 he went to Huntington County, Indiana, where he was engaged subsequently in merchandising, from 1865 to 1875. He has always been an active worker in the Methodist Church, and is now living in retirement in Huntington County. At the age of thirteen, WILLIAM was taken by his father to Huntington, where he lived until 1858, when he moved to Winamac, and there spent a year; in 1859, he came to Monterey, and has lived here ever since. At the age of sixteen, he began the study of medicine at Markle, Indiana, under JOSEPH SCOTT, M.D.; in 1856 - 1857, he took a seven months course of lectures at the Starling Medical College, Columbus, and then practiced a year in Huntington County before coming to Winamac. He attended a course of lectures, in the session of 1873 - 1874, at the Medical College of Indiana, Department of Butler University, Indianapolis, receiving the degree of M.D. in the spring of 1874. He was married, May 27, 1858, to SARAH J. BARNES, in Huntington County, who has given birth to nine children - WILLIAM, CHARLES, MARY, THOMAS, JAMES, NETTIE, MAUD, FREDDIE and HARRY; of these THOMAS, FREDDIE and HARRY are dead. April 22, 1879, the Doctor was married at Monterey to LAURA STEIS, who has borne one son - JONAS ARTHUR. The Doctor now farms 300 to 500 acres, having for the past ten or twelve years devoted great attention to agriculture."

"Counties of White and Pulaski Counties, Indiana - Tippecanoe Township" by F.A. Battey & Co. - published in 1883

They wrote Jonas Arthur instead of Aurthur Jonas and Laura Steis instead of Helena Steis. - Scott Thomas.

William did experimental agriculture work in Monterey and did much of the foundation work that shaped the way farming was done in the Monterey area. He did such things as buy in guano from Chile and potash from Bolivia. He experimented with potatoes, oniens and alfalfa. He was involved in one of the 1st ever malpractice suits. The story is he took a cast off a broken leg too early and the man got drunk and fell down and rebroke the leg. It cost William $20,000. William eventually died dead broke.

Charles Kelsey, writes: "I knew my Grandfather Kelsey quite well in that I played cards with him and did odd jobs for him. For a days work I received a $.".

AGED DOCTOR, 95 KILLED BY TRAIN - Dr. Wm. Kelsey of Monterey, County's oldest Man, Drives Onto Track.
Dr William Kelsey's nintey-five years of active life came to a sudden close Tuesday Afternoon about 3:00 o'clock when he was instantly killed by a fast Erie train in his home town of Monterey.
Probably the county's oldest citizen, and for more than seventy years a prominent physician well known in this and adjacent counties, Dr. Kelsey drove his horse and buggy onto a crossing directly in the path of the approaching train. He was thrown a distance of 150 feet and terribly mangled. The impact tore the vehicle and harness from the horse, which ran down the street.
Still favoring the methods of travel that prevailed when he was a younger man, the elderly doctor continued the use of a horse and buggy, and even though approaching the century mark he was active in business affairs, mostly in connection with farming intrests. He had been out north of Monterey and was returning at the time of the accident, which occured not at the principal crossing in town, where there are flasher signals, but at a crossing about a block to the east.
Drives Onto Crossing
Misses Elizabeth and Clara Buwa, living near by, saw the doctor approaching the crossing as the train neared the same point. They endeavored to warn him but were unable to secure his attention. The train was an east-bound flyer, running at high speed, and traveled some distance before it could be brought to a stop.
The mangled remains of the aged physician were gatered up by friends who rushed to the scene, and taken to the Lukenbill undertaking establishment. Dr H. J. Halleck, county coroner, was summoned.
As one of the pioneers of Pulaski county, Dr. Kelsey was intimately identified with the progress of the community from the days when is was sparsely settled. Born in Perry county, Ohio, on August 14, 1835, he came to eastern Indiana as a boy and begun the study of medicine at Markle when he was sixteen years of age. In 1858 he came to Winamac and remained a year, then located at Monterey and became one of the leading citizens of that part of the county.
Two Sons are Doctors
About the time he came to Winamac Dr. Kelsey was married, in Huntington county, to Sarah Jane Barnes. Subsequent to her death he was again married, in 1877, to Miss Laney Steis, who survives. The doctor was the father of twelve children, four of whom are living. Dr W. E. Kelsey, Dr. A. J. Kelsey and Mrs. J. R. Sennett are residents of Monterey; the other daughter, Mrs Emma Hartman, lives in Pueblo, Colo. He also leaves two brothers and a sister - Thomas Kelsey of Nebraska, Amos Kelsey of Marion, Kan., and Mrs. Tillie Sholl of Hot Springs, N. Dak.
Funeral services are to be held Friday afternoon at 1:00 o'clock at the Monterey Methodist church, conducted by Rev. L. H. Green. Burial will be in the Moterey cemetery.

The siblings (Thomas and Amos & Mrs. Sholl) were children of the 2nd wife of Jonas (Martha  Auld). William E. Kelsey was a child of the 1st marriage (Jonas and Sarah Elder). -SJT

KELSEY REFERENCES

PAGE AUTHORS