Trying to find out information about boarding houses and/or saloons owned by a Kelly family in San Francisco from 1860's to early 1900s or so. All I know is that the one of businesses may have been named the Five, Six, Eight, or Nine Mile House. I have searched pre-1900 city directories and have found several possibilities (2 possibilities are a boardinghouse owned by Martin Kelly, 1869, 111 Jessie and the Eighth Street House, 321 Eighth St., owned by Mrs. John Kelly in 1879). Owners are related to my Great Great Grandmother, Margaret Kelly who married Thomas Augustine Jones, in 1869. Only other fact known: One owner was killed by horses in front of the boardinghouse. Is it possibly to find information on the ownership of pre-1906 businesses and their history?

-- Melody Lassalle (AchadaMaia@aol.com), September 07, 1998

Answers

The surname Kelly is a frequently-found one in early S.F. history. There was a bar called Kelly's Saloon in the Western Addition sometime in the mid to late 1800s. You might check out some of the several books on the Irish in S.F. The one I have, Patrick Dowling's "California, the Irish Dream," is, maddeningly, without an index. The Stanford-produced compendium, "California Local Historym, A Bibliography" contains numerous listings to various Kellys in San Francisco history. I seem to recall there being some involvement of a Martin Kelly with the Abbey House, a roadhouse of the 1800s which was near the San Mateo county line, but I'm uncertain of that one. Roadhouses in general, however, frequently bore the names of the mileage from the city proper at which they were located. Thus we had Four-Mile House, at Railroad (San Bruno, today) and 24th Sts., owned by one August Florentine; Five-mile house, of which there were two, one owned by Frank Meillete, the other by Wolkenhauer and Fisher, both of them near 3rd and San Bruno; Fourteen-Mile House, on old Mission Road, etc. (by the way, those ref.s are from Matthew Brady's column in the Independent, "The Old Town," 12-3-91.)

good luck!

-- Chris Dichtel (cyberiad@earthlink.net), October 27, 1998.