George Kelley
George C. Kelley (born July 30, 1847 in Wilmington, North Carolina; died February 8, 1923 in Wilmington, North Carolina) was a hardware dealer, president of the Baxter Stove Works, and an investor in the development of East Birmingham.
Kelley was the second of nine children born to George H. and Julia Agnes Cason Kelley. He married the former Icoline Bates in 1874.
Kelley established his hardware business in a modern iron and plate glass building at 1917 2nd Avenue North. In 1883 Kelley partnered with F. M. Thompson and A. H. Clisby in the Alabama & Coosa Coal Company, which aimed to develop mines in the Coosa coal fields.
He sold the business to the Towers Hardware Company before founding the Baxter Stove Works and partnering in the East Birmingham Land Company in 1886. He served as president of the East Birmingham Railroad Company and the St Clair Mining and Mineral Company. In 1913 Kelley was awarded a franchise from the City of Birmingham to construct a streetcar line that would connect to Elmwood Cemetery, but the 1913–1914 recession prevented him from raising enough capital to proceed.
Kelley erected a mausoleum vault at Birmingham's Oak Hill Cemetery at the death of his infant son, Irwin, in 1885. Icoline died at home after a short illness in 1889 and was interred there as well. By the time he died in 1923, however, George Kelley had returned to Wilmington and was buried at Oakdale Cemetery there.
References
- "Another Big Scheme: A Magnificent 5,000 Acre Coal Field to be Developed Soon" (June 21, 1883) Birmingham Iron Age, p. 3
- Dubose, John Witherspoon (1887) Jefferson County and Birmingham, Alabama: Historical and Biographical Birmingham: Teeple & Smith, Publishers; Caldwell Printing Works.
External links
- George C. Kelley at findagrave.com