Colusa Biographical Sketches.
CHAPTER XII.
HON. K.E. KELLEY.
Kirk Etna Kelley is a native of Warren County, Illinois, born June 3, 1848. His father was one of the pioneers of California, coming to this State in 1848, shortly after the birth of Kirk E., and dying there some two years later. When but a child, his widowed mother, his brother and an adopted sister moved to Iowa, and here young Kirk was brought up on a farm. He attended school only three months and never entered the door of a high school or college except in the capacity of a teacher. What he acquired in an educational way was the result of his own self-teaching, of long hours in the evening, spent in reading, after a hard day's work. He was always an omnivorous reader of books, and his retentive memory gleaned and stored away the pith and substance of what he found therein, for effective use in after life. When he had reached his seventeenth year, young Kelley passed his examination and received his certificate of teacher. He then began teaching in the public schools and followed it for several years in Missouri and Kansas. In 1871 he came to California, and for two years taught school in Solano County. Being naturally ambitious to rise, Mr. Kelley began the study of the law. He had formed a partnership in the real-estate business at Dixon, and this afforded him an opportunity to devote his leisure time to his "black-letter books." He borrowed his books, and, by dint of hard study, was admitted to practice in the county court of Solano at the end of a year. At the close of the following year he was admitted to practice his profession before the District Courts of the Sixth and Seventh Judicial Districts. He was afterwards entitled to practice by admission before the Supreme Court of the State and Circuit Court of the United States. His large business was extensive and his fees were fat, and he was enabled to retire from active practice in the courts in 1884. In 1882 he was elected State Senator from Yolo and Solano Counties, and served in the twenty-fifth Legislative Assembly during the regular and extra sessions. This was the notable period in which efforts were made to oust the Railroad Commissioners by joint resolution of the two Houses of the Legislature. Mr. Kelley opposed the movement, and by reason thereof he was, with other members, read out by the Democratic party at the famous Stockton convention.
Mr. Kelley came to Willows in 1885, and purchased the Willows Journal, which he edited and conducted in connection with W.H. Kelley for two years. A close logician and a master of vigorous English, Mr. Kelley soon lifted this newspaper from obscurity into the most flattering prosperity. Since his coming to Willows he has always identified himself with the business and social advancement of that town. His energy, shrewdness, persistence and knowledge of men and motives, have always brought him to the front, a cheerful leader, particularly of any forlorn hope in which his town requires prudent generalship. In the struggles for the division of the county and for the formation of Glenn County, Mr. Kelley was acknowledged by the opponents of that measure to be their most skillful and most formidable adversary. In 1888 he was sent as a delegate to the Democratic State Convention at Los Angeles. Mr. Kelley was married, in 1876, to Miss Louisa, daughter of Daniel Zumwalt, a pioneer of California and an old resident of the county.
COLUSA COUNTY
ITS
HISTORY TRACED FROM A STATE OF NATURE
THROUGH THE EARLY PERIOD OF SET-
TLEMENT AND DEVELOPMENT,
TO THE PRESENT DAY
WITH A
DESCRIPTION OF ITS RESOURCES, STATISTICAL
TABLES, ETC.
ALSO
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES OF PIONEERS AND
PROMINENT RESIDENTS
by Justus H. Rogers
Orland, California
1891
Page 343-465
Transcribed by: Linda Diane Jackson 7/1/2009
Colusa County Biographies ~ Archive Biography Index ~ Archive Index
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