1831-????
Adoniram Judson Kelly
Baptist pastor/Missionary NC/GA
The 1831 report from the Burman mission told of 217 baptisms and in that same year Adoniram Judson Kelly was born in North Carolina. We are able to find no report on the demise of Adoniram Judson Kelly but his peers wrote glowingly of his ministry while he was still alive in 1881 at age 50. Next to his picture with full beard and period dress, The History of the Baptist Denomination in Georgia reports his life and mission thusly:
Rev. Adoniram Judson Kelly was born in Macon county, North Carolina, October, 1831; professed faith in Christ and joined the Baptist church at Franklin, October, 1848, and was licensed to preach in August, 1854. [Kelly sold his farm] and, October, 1854, entered Sand Hill Academy, a high school taught by a Presbyterian minister in Buncombe county, North Carolina… At the close of the first year he determined to make an effort to graduate at Wake Forest College. But in two years at the College [1855-57] his health so failed that he was compelled to abandon the further prosecution of his studies.
In the latter part of 1857, he returned to his mother’s and engaged in mission work under the auspices of the Western Convention of North Carolina, and was ordained to the full work of the ministry, March, 1858….
In August of that year he came to Gwinnett county, Georgia, and traveled as missionary and colporter in the Lawrenceville Association, teaching school also as necessity required. Having been chosen pastor of the Academy church, in Jackson county, in 1860, and of Cabin Creek church in 1861, he moved to Jefferson, January, 1862, married Mrs. Burns, of that place, the 9th of February following, and soon after settled on a farm in its vicinity.
He has labored under serious disadvantages, during the greater part of his ministry. Almost a constant sufferer from chronic sore throat, he sometimes despairs of ever preaching again….
He is a good writer; and though he has extensively contributed to the secular and religious press, yet he scarcely ever writes an article which pleases himself.
A warm friend of missions both at home and abroad, of temperance, Sunday schools and strict discipline among the churches, he labors and prayers for their universal prevalence…[1]
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[1] History of the Baptist Denomination in Georgia with biographical compendium and portrait gallery of Baptist ministers and other Georgia Baptists, (Publisher: J. P. Harrison and Company, 1881), pp. 300-301.