Mountain Grove Cemetery, as Blue Lick Cemetery is now known, is located northwest of Forest Grove Cemetery on Mountain Grove Road, near Pixley Knob Road in Grant 265. Click here for a topographical map of this site, courtesy of www.TopoZone.com. There was once a church here.

A comprehensive index of this site was included in the "Clark County Cemeteries" publication of the Hoosier Journal of Ancestry

Franklin E. Kelly at Mountain Grove Cemetery, near the graves of Lawrence and Martha Kelly, his great-great-great-grandparents.

Left:  Original stone of Lawrence Kelly (1740-Sept. 24, 1823), with DAR marker.  Center:  Bronze Revolutionary War marker (close-up below).  Right:  Original stone of Martha Smith Kelly (1742-Sept. 22, 1823).

Tom Kelly (son of Franklin E. Kelly, pictured above) of St. Louis, Missouri <tpkelly@swbell.net>, who provided these photographs, has done a good deal of research on his KELLY line and reports the following:

Lawrence Kelly b.1740 in PA. d.1823 in Monroe Twp., Clark Co., Indiana. He and his wife Martha (Smith) are buried at Mountain Grove Cemetery in Blue Lick. However, I have not found them in any cemetery records for Clark Co. or Mountain Grove Cem. records.

Last February (1998), I made a trip to Clark Co. and Mountain Grove Cemetery to look for them. I did find them there, but only because DAR or someone dug up the stones that must have been broken and then sunk into the soil a very long time ago. Someone or the DAR reset the stones and put a DAR marker there and also a brass plate for Lawrence that reads:

Lawrence R. Kelly
Capt. John Foster's Co.
Revolutionary War
1740-1823

But nothing for Martha. The stones are in very poor condition and you can not hardly read anything on them except for the name Laurence at the bottom of his stone. They are a matching set of stones with some type of drawing at the top of both of them that I think is some type of drawing or symbol for Revolutionary War Veteran.

Much of my information on Lawrence and Martha Kelly came from a diary written by Daniel Guernsey. He recorded in his diary the deaths of Martha and Lawrence. Martha (Smith) Kelly died Sept. 22, 1823 at the age of 81 years and Lawrence Kelly died two days later on Sept. 24, 1823 at the age of 83 and were both buried in the woods near the home of John Dietz. Their graves were the first to be buried at what became Mountain Grove Cemetery.

I would also like some day to have a brass plate put there for Martha that would match Lawrence's plate. Perhaps I could get other family members to help with this later after I put more family history information together about them.

More photos by Tom Kelly (circa 1998)

Lawrence R. Kelly's Revolutionary War Marker

I presently have no further information on this cemetery. This information was obtained from either the:

Jeffersonville Twp. Library     or      Charlestown Library

211 East Court Avenue                   51 Clark Road

Jeffersonville, Indiana 47130           Charlestown, Indiana  47111

Telephone:  (812) 285-5635              Telephone:  (812) 256-3337