Nabby Hunt : Short Biography

Nabby Hunt was born about 1839 to Thomas Hunt and Mary Ann Lane. Family knowledge handed down said Roscommon was her birthplace. Roscommon could be a County, Parish, Poor Law Union or town. From my research I find Hunt surnames near County Roscommon in Carracastle and Swinford of County Mayo and also in the Kilbride and Roscommon parishes of the Ballintober South Barony. Given her mother’s surname was Lane we see from John Grenham’s website the Lane distribution is in eastern County Roscommon near Lanesborough. Putting the Hunt and Lane distributions together finds proximity in Kilbride and Roscommon.  I consider these a higher probability of place of birth.

Nabby immigrated to New York City in 1863 without any additional family members; thereafter records resume at her marriage to Michael Kelly in 1867 at St. Louis, Missouri. Michael is from the Castlerea area of County Roscommon.

Their life together is documented through Catholic Church Records, United States Census Records, St. Louis Death records, Missouri Death Certificates and the St. Louis City Directory.

There is evidence that her husband worked at the Fulton Ironworks of St. Louis and also provided a laundry service of which Nabby was likely a participant.

Their children were eight in number of which four survived into adulthood. Their first child, named after Michael’s mother, died in infancy; one more died in infancy from Tetanus and a third died at five years of age from scalding. Perhaps a victim of the laundry service the family provided.

Only two of their children survived to reproduce; Michael Jr. a laborer died of sunstroke at age 44 and Mary Ann who died in 1930 of heart failure at age 59.

The 1880 US Census records a mother Mary Anne Dowling in the Kelly household. She may be Nabby Hunt’s mother who remarried to a Dowling.

Nabby died in St. Louis in the year 1913 at an approximate age of 74. She is buried on the family lot in Calvary Cemetery of St. Louis.