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Chairman, Fort Wayne board of public works; Allen County recorder
On the record
Kelly was born in the family homestead in Fort Wayne, son of Thomas F. Kelly, an Irish immigrant who had worked on the canal and captained a state boat. Robert left the Catholic parochial schools before fifteen to be a messenger boy for the Fort Wayne, Cincinnati and Louisville Railroad, worked up to locomotive fireman, and at twenty-one was a locomotive engineer, running passenger trains until 1908. That year he was elected county recorder of Allen County and served four years. In 1914 he was appointed to the Fort Wayne board of public works and was its chairman when Griswold wrote. He kept his membership in the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and served two terms as treasurer of the Indiana Ancient Order of Hibernians. He married Ellen Ryan of Rushville on 15 May 1888.
Sources: Griswold, Pictorial History, Vol. II (1917), biographical sketch, read first-hand. No second source reached for this profile.