Educated in private schools, at the age of seventeen he entered the army, but did riot engage in active service. His business life began in North Carolina Carolina, where, for a period of two years, he was associated with his father in the general mercantile trade. Returning to Wilmington he was connected with George A. Peck, in the hardware business, for five years. He subsequently accepted the position of private secretary, under the president and superintendent of the Atlantic Coast Railroad lines, and filled it acceptably for two years. He next entered the auditor's department of the Wilmington & Weldon Railroad Company, which position he retained until 1878, when he resigned, and was placed in charge of the books of William Hall & Co., leading hardware merchants, of Montgomery, Ala.

In 1881 he became a resident of Birmingham, and erected upon Second Avenue one of the finest buildings devoted to the mercantile trade that now adorn it. It is a model of its kind.

Mr. Kelley established a trade which reaches and embraces nearly the entire South, devoting his energies entirely to the wholesale and retail hardware business. In January, 1887, he sold his hardware business, and devotes his time to wider fields. Possessing a thorough knowledge of his trade, and the superior advantages of Birmingham as a manufacturing center, he was the primal power in establishing the Baxter Stove Manufacturing Company, destined to become one of the leading industries of the South. He is the president of this company, a complete sketch of which appears in another portion of this work.

Mr. Kelley is also president of the St. Clair Mining and Mineral Company, and owns a one-half interest in the Alabama & Coosa Coal Company, consisting of five thousand acres located near Birmingham, upon the Georgia Pacific Railroad.

Mr. Kelley was the leader in erecting many magnificent suburban homes around Birmingham, having, in 1882, purchased upon Fountain Heights an area of ten acres, upon which he erected the beautiful residence that he now occupies.

He has invested his accumulations in Birmingham, and is largely interested in the most valuable mining lands of the State; in a number of the leading corporations of the city, and is always ready to advance a helping hand to any project pertaining to the development of the home of his adoption.

Mr. Kelley is a young man, and possesses superior business qualifications, upon which it is not necessary to enlarge, for the success which has attended his career speaks for itself. He is a charitable Christian gentleman. He was united in marriage June 25, 1874, with Miss Icoline L. Bates, daughter of Jared and Artemisa (Tulane) Bates, natives of Alabama. To them have been born three children—George Bates, Wilbur Edrald, and Irwin Olin.

He was born in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1861, where he was reared and educated, having graduated at the age of eighteen years. Like most young men in large cities Mr. Kettig, notwithstanding his fine education, for a long time found great difficulty in finding a suitable situation. He finally obtained employment, in a pork packing establishment, as a shipping clerk, at the insignificant salary of one dollar per week. But this did not discourage him. He set hard to work as if he was getting a princely salary, and in six weeks his employers increased his remuneration tenfold, and when, six months after, he accepted another position in a large manufacturing supply house, his old employers offered the young man, then being only nineteen years old, an interest in the profits of their business if he would stay with them. But Mr. Kettig disliked the pork business, and set diligently to work learning the hardware and supply business as traveling agent, and afterward accepted a very responsible position from the largest hardware and mill supply firm in the West, with headquarters at St. Louis. Three years after Mr. Kettig, having established a large trade through the .South and West, was induced to locate in Birmingham, and formed a copartnership with Major W. J. Milner, under the firm name of Milner & Kettig. This house, under his management, rapidly assumed an immense importance to the trade of Birmingham, and its name is now well known throughout the entire South and West. Being possessed of indomitable energy and great force of will power, Mr. Kettig always overcame obstacles in his path, which were often serious, and where many others would have been discouraged and given up the battle. Polite and courteous to everybody, he has made many friends in the Magic City who hold him in esteem.

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C. Anthony