The Fort Wayne Road

 

Perhaps it was a mild form of presentism which struck me when pondering the early years of Timothy Kelly. Since he was a contemporary and co-worker of my father-in-law's great-grandfather John Kelly, I've been trying to discern whether there was any further connection between the two Kelly men. Finding information on Timothy Kelly, I hoped, could fill in a few blanks regarding how the two were connected.

Timothy Kelly's September 22, 1901, obituary in the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette mention his work, back in 1857, on "the Fort Wayne road." Since I had been unable to find Timothy in census records before 1870, I was keen to locate his whereabouts. A sighting in the 1860 census, before his marriage to Ellen Hannan in October, might provide the names of his parents, or at least a mention of siblings.

Wondering what the "Fort Wayne Road" might have referred to—here I was thinking of something historic like Zane's Trace, admittedly a too-far stretch into the wrong period of history—I took my question about the road to the search engines. When the responses mentioned routes far too early for Timothy's participation in a construction project in 1857, I added that specific year to my search terms.

Suddenly, the results were no longer discussing the early roads of stage coach travel, but a far different kind of road: rail roads. Of course it made all the sense in the world, once my mind shifted to the realities of that era. Even more than that, putting it in context with a man who spent the rest of his working years employed by the railroads—oh, duh, how could I have missed it?

Stuck in my own timeframe.

The Fort Wayne Road, if you're curious, was part of the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne and Chicago Rail Road, later reorganized as the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne and Chicago Railway. Fort Wayne, as a city, played a large role in the development of railroad lines through the midwest, something I should have surmised from my research visits to the city over the years. The Allen County History Center mentioned in a social media post that Fort Wayne was considered one of the most important railroad centers in the nation.

While it was helpful to get reoriented to what was considered the prime "road" in the city during that time period, knowing these railroad details didn't quite pinpoint where I might find young Timothy Kelly. The entire railroad operation extended westward from Pittsburgh through Fort Wayne and on to Chicago. In fact, researching the term, "the Fort Wayne road," I found one mention which identified the Fort Wayne Railroad Bridge as crossing the Allegheny into Pittsburgh—certainly far from Fort Wayne itself. If the entirety of the tracks was dubbed the Fort Wayne road, that would make pinpointing Timothy's location quite a puzzle.

On the other hand, mention of some of Timothy's family residing in Ohio might make more sense if the family had moved with the expansion of the work project. It might help to turn our attention to mentions of the Kelly family in various newspaper reports over time.