Eugene Kelly (November 25, 1808 – December 19, 1894) was an Irish-American

merchant A merchant is a person who trades in commodities produced by other people, especially one who trades with foreign countries. Historically, a merchant is anyone who is involved in business or trade. Merchants have operated for as long as indust ...

banker A bank is a financial institution that accepts Deposit account, deposits from the public and creates a demand deposit while simultaneously making loans. Lending activities can be directly performed by the bank or indirectly through capital m ...

, and

philanthropist Philanthropy is a form of altruism that consists of "private initiatives, for the Public good (economics), public good, focusing on quality of life". Philanthropy contrasts with business initiatives, which are private initiatives for private goo ...

who founded corporations in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

and

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. Eugene Kelly was born in

County Tyrone County Tyrone (; ) is one of the six Counties of Northern Ireland, counties of Northern Ireland, one of the nine counties of Ulster and one of the thirty-two traditional Counties of Ireland, counties of Ireland. It is no longer used as an admini ...

, Ireland, the son of Thomas Boye O'Kelly. At the age of twenty-four he emigrated to the United States, and became a clerk in the mercantile house of Donnelly Bros, New York. After a few years, he removed to

Maysville, Kentucky Maysville is a home rule-class city in Mason County, Kentucky, United States and is the seat of Mason County. The population was 8,782 as of 2019, making it the 51st-largest city in Kentucky by population. Maysville is on the Ohio River, north ...

, and went into business, but later on established himself in

St. Louis St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the bi-state metropolitan area, which e ...

. When the

California Gold Rush The California Gold Rush (1848–1855) was a gold rush that began on January 24, 1848, when gold was found by James W. Marshall at Sutter's Mill in Coloma, California. The news of gold brought approximately 300,000 people to California fro ...

began, he saw the opportunity and went to San Francisco in the latter part of 1849, opening a mercantile establishment there in partnership with Joseph A. Donohoe, Daniel T. Murphy and Adam Grant. After ten years of business, the firm dissolved, and Kelly took part in founding the Pacific Coast banking house of Donohoe, Ralston & Co., in San Francisco, and the firm of Eugene Kelly & Co., in New York. In 1894, Kelly retired and the house was dissolved. He was a factor in railroad business and banking for a third of a century. He founded the Southern Bank of the State of Georgia and contributed largely to the rebuilding of the town hall of

Charleston, South Carolina Charleston is the largest city in the U.S. state of South Carolina, the county seat of Charleston County, and the principal city in the Charleston–North Charleston metropolitan area. The city lies just south of the geographical midpoint o ...

, after the Civil War. He was a director in the

National Park Bank The National Park Bank was founded in 1856 in New York City, and by the late 19th century, it did more commercial business than any other bank in the country. History The bank built a significant Second Empire early skyscraper at 214-18 Broadway & ...

, the

Bank of New York The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation, commonly known as BNY Mellon, is an American investment banking services holding company headquartered in New York City. BNY Mellon was formed from the merger of The Bank of New York and the Mellon Financ ...

, the Equitable Life Assurance Society, the

Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank Emigrant Bank (formerly Emigrant Savings Bank) is a private American financial institution. It is the oldest savings bank in New York City and it was the ninth-largest privately owned bank in America in 2012, with assets of $8.1 billion. As of June ...

, and the Title Guarantee and Trust Company; he was also connected with many other financial and railroad corporations. He was known as a supporter of arts, charity and education: he was one of the original life members of the

National Academy of Design The National Academy of Design is an honorary association of American artists, founded in New York City in 1825 by Samuel Morse, Asher Durand, Thomas Cole, Martin E. Thompson, Charles Cushing Wright, Ithiel Town, and others "to promote the fin ...

, for thirteen years a member of the

New York City Board of Education The Panel for Educational Policy of the Department of Education of the City School District of the City of New York, abbreviated as the Panel for Educational Policy and also known as the New York City Board of Education, is the governing body of ...

, a patron of the

American Museum of Natural History The American Museum of Natural History (abbreviated as AMNH) is a natural history museum on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. In Theodore Roosevelt Park, across the street from Central Park, the museum complex comprises 26 inter ...

and the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

, and a member of the

New York Chamber of Commerce The New York Chamber of Commerce was founded in 1768 by twenty New York City merchants. As the first such commercial organization in the United States, it attracted the participation of a number of New York's most influential business leaders, in ...

. In 1884, he was Elector-at-Large and chairman of the New York Electoral College. In the Roman

Catholic Church The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

, of which he was a member, he was a prominent layman, being one of the founders of the

Catholic University of America The Catholic University of America (CUA) is a private Roman Catholic research university in Washington, D.C. It is a pontifical university of the Catholic Church in the United States and the only institution of higher education founded by U.S. ...

, and a director until his death. He was also a trustee of Seton Hall College and a member of the committees which had oversight of the construction of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the

Washington Square Arch The Washington Square Arch, officially the Washington Arch, is a marble memorial arch in Washington Square Park, in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Lower Manhattan, New York City. Designed by architect Stanford White in 1891, it commemora ...

and the

Statue of Liberty The Statue of Liberty (''Liberty Enlightening the World''; French: ''La Liberté éclairant le monde'') is a List of colossal sculpture in situ, colossal neoclassical sculpture on Liberty Island in New York Harbor in New York City, in the U ...

erected in

New York Harbor New York Harbor is at the mouth of the Hudson River where it empties into New York Bay near the East River tidal estuary, and then into the Atlantic Ocean on the east coast of the United States. It is one of the largest natural harbors in t ...

. The first wife of Eugene Kelly died in 1848. His daughter, Eugenia, by this marriage, became the wife of James A. G. Beales of New York. In 1857, he married Margaret Hughes, niece of

Archbishop John Hughes John Joseph Hughes (June 24, 1797 – January 3, 1864) was a prelate of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States. He was the fourth Bishop and first Archbishop of the Archdiocese of New York, serving between 1842 and his death in 1864. In ...

, and four sons by this marriage survived him — Eugene, Edward, Thomas Hughes and Robert J. Kelly. He died in New York following a paralytic stroke.

See also