Col. Moses Kelly, on the authority of Dearborn, historian of Salisbury, was born in Newbury, Mass. He was living in Goffstown, N. H., before the outbreak of the Revolution. He represented that town in the Fourth Provincial Congress held in May, 1775, and again in the Fifth Provincial Congress in December, 1775.
He represented Goffstown and Derryfield in the Legislature of 1776. Although not serving in the Continental army, he was, from the State records, one of the most active men in the state. It is written of him that he owned mills in Goffstown at the place now known as Kelly’s Falls upon the Piscataquog River. He was a zealous patriot, and kept a public house upon the Mast road. Many of the forays against the Tories of that neighborhood were concocted at Colonel Kelly’s.
He was appointed major of the Ninth regiment of militia on Dec. 21, 1775, and promoted to colonel of the same regiment in 1779. New Hampshire possessed an efficient force of militia during the Revolution and from its ranks were drafted men for three Continental regiments as occasion required. Some of these militia regiments distinguished themselves at Bennington, under Stark, and at Rhode Island, under Sullivan.
It is doubtful if any one man had more to do with affairs at home than Colonel Kelly, and his special forte was in furnishing recruits for the veteran regiments at the front. In the reorganization of the state militia under General Sullivan, in 1784, he was reappointed colonel of his old command, the Ninth New Hampshire.
Like Sullivan, he was continually in the service of the state in one capacity or another. As late as 1807, he read the Declaration of Independence from the top of a large boulder in Amherst, N. H. His son, bearing the same name, was coroner of Hillsborough County in 1789. Another son, Hon. Israel Kelly, removed to Salisbury, in 1803. In 1843 he removed to East Concord, where he made his home until his death in 1857.
He was the sheriff of Hillsborough County, a judge of the Court of Sessions, and United States marshal under President Taylor. His wife was a sister of Grace Fletcher, who was the wife of Daniel Webster. Her mother and grandmother, bore the time-honored name of Bridget, denoting an affinity of some sort with the natives of the Emerald Isle.
Joshua Kelly was one of the proprietors of Conway, N. H., and on its list of rate payers in 1773. He was one of the active men of the town, and had seen military service. Samuel Kelly was one of the coroners of Strafford County in 1776. One of the same name was a member of the House of Representatives in 1776. It appears again on a petition from Madbury in 1786. Lieut. Samuel Kelly was one of the special force raised by Sullivan in December, 1775. A Samuel Kelly served in Captain Barron’s company from Pembroke in 1776, and a Samuel Kelly was in Captain Moore’s company in Stark’s regiment in the same year.
Samuel Kelly of New Hampton, undoubtedly one of Darby’s descendants, served in Col. Hercules Mooney’s regiment in Rhode Island in 1779.
Another Samuel Kelly of Meredith, saw service at Ticonderoga. Rev. Samuel Kelly, according to Bouton’s History of Concord, N. H., was the first settled pastor of the Methodist Episcopal church in Concord. He was chaplain of the state prison in 1730. The name of Samuel Kelly of Brentwood is mentioned four times in the Provincial deeds, and once again in Derryfield in 1768. He was undoubtedly the oldest son of Darby Kelly and one of the first settlers of New Hampton.
Daniel Kelly was in Sanbornton, N. H., in 1748, and another Daniel Kelly was recorded as a deserter from a British vessel in Boston Harbor in 1770. He probably found the change from the forecastle of a ship to the picturesque hills of New Hampshire desirable.