Dudley A Kelly : Short Biography

This story is about my great grandfather, Dudley Kelly (1835-1909).
His parents, Andrew Kelly and Alice Durkan, were married in Swinford in April, 1826. (One of their witnesses was named Tom Grufferty). Alice and her sons emigrated to America around 1850. My Kelly cousins who stayed behind (in Swinford or Dublin) continued to work as grocers, then lawyers, now hotel owners. Alice Durkan married a McAvoy, after Andrew Kelly died in 1837. Whether she remarried in Ireland or in America is an open question.
She and her five sons emigrated around 1850, in two groups. Two sons (Patrick and Anthony) landed at Grosse Isle on the St. Lawrence River (the border between New York and Canada); but they split up, with Anthony wandering off to Macon, Georgia, while Patrick opened a grocery in St. Paul, Minnesota. John, James and Dudley landed in New Orleans.
John died at the end of the Civil War, likely from injuries. James reappeared with his mother in New York City, where they owned a shoe store together. Dudley joined the Confederate Army in Savannah, in 1862. He was captured in 1865 and sent to a P.O.W. camp near Cleveland, Ohio. His brothers found him there and somehow helped to get him released. He headed for New York and joined the shoe business. His brother James died in 1866 and Dudley took over the store, and took care of his mother too. She died in 1869 and is buried in Calvary Cemetery in Queens County, NY., overlooking Manhattan. Dudley owned several shoe stores and real estate in Manhattan and Brooklyn, NY. He prospered and raised funds to support freedom for the Irish.