(1731-1812). Corporal, Colonel Josiah Smith’s Regiment, 1st Regiment of Minutemen, Suffolk County; associator, Huntington, New York. Stephen was born on December 9, 1731, as per the posting on Find A Grave’s website. His parents were Daniel Kelcy and Eunice née Jarvis. WikiTree, another online genealogy forum, posts a birth date of December 8, 1730, and spells the surname as Kelsey. WikiTree names Stephen as an heir in the will of Daniel, his father who died on October 16, 1752, and reports that Stephen Sr.’s father and grandparents were from Hartford, Connecticut. Stephen’s siblings, according to WikiTree, were: Susannah Kelsey Sammis (half-sister); Timothy Kelsey (half-brother), Daniel Kelsey, and Mary Kelsey Brush (half-sister). Stephen’s surname has several alternate spellings, often spelled as Kelsey on various documents, but Kelcy is the name on his gravestone. Stephen married Anna Platt in Huntington on March 31, 1752 and they had two sons, Platt (1756-1816) and Stephen (see) (1759-1814); the Platt family dates its arrival in New Haven, Connecticut to 1638.
Both Stephen and his son served in the militia during the American Revolution as per The Compendium of American Genealogy, Volume III; both men were also associators in Huntington. Associators were men who signed the Association of Huntington on May 9, 1775, a written statement of locals supporting the Patriot cause. As a signer of the Huntington’s 1775 Articles of Association (an associator), he demonstrated that he was a patriot.
On May 8, 1775, 403 men, most of them Huntington residents (a few were from Islip), “shocked by the bloody Scene” that had occurred just weeks before at Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts, where patriot Minutemen and British regulars had engaged in a bloody armed struggle, put their signatures on Huntington’s Articles of Association. Only 37 Huntington residents, either Loyalists or those wanting to stay out of the fray, refused to sign. The Articles noted that the signers affirmed their “Love to our Country,” agreed “to whatever Measures may be recommended by the Continental Congress; or resolved upon by our Provincial Convention, for the Purpose of preserving our Constitution, and opposition to the Execution of the several arbitrary, and oppressive Acts of the British Parliament,” and prayed for “a Reconciliation between Great-Britain and America.” The actions of these associators were seen by both patriots and the British as a step towards rebellion. The fact that these men signed these Articles, placing themselves in danger of British retaliation, including imprisonment, seizure of their property, and exile from Long Island, is proof of their patriotic service.
As per Mather in Refugees Long Island to Connecticut (1913), the elder Kelsey was on the Committee of Huntington and was on the committee that raised the 1st Regiment in 1775. Mather notes that Stephen Sr. served as a private and rose to corporal in Colonel Smith’s Regiment, recorded under the surname of Kelly; he might also have served in Connecticut. The Compendium of American Genealogy, Volume III, also reports that Stephen’s was the supervisor of Huntington in 1778 during the British occupation which lasted from September 1, 1776 to the end of the Revolutionary War.
Mather notes that Stephen Sr. served as a private and rose to corporal in Colonel Smith’s Regiment, recorded under the surname of Kelly; he might also have served in Connecticut. Considered by the British to be one of the main rebels in Huntington (Mather, page 175), Stephen was paid three pounds on June 24, 1776, for detecting a conspiracy in the Continental Army. It is possible that he was the Kelsey mentioned in Suffolk County histories as engaging in illicit trade in 1779; Huntington was under British control dating from the crushing loss after the Battle of Long Island (Battle of Brooklyn) on August 27, 1776, through the end of the American Revolution in 1783. A tribute on Kelcy’s Find A Grave page confirms that he served in the 1st Regiment of Minutemen, Suffolk County Militia, during the American Revolution.
Raymond Gould Brush, a descendant of Stephen Jr.’s daughter, Elizabeth Conkling (Conklin), applied for membership in the Sons of the American Revolution (SAR); his application was approved on January 21, 1926, for the patriotic service of both Kelcys. Raymond reported that he was the great-great-great grandson of Stephen Kelsey (sic), Stephen’s father, and reported that the elder Kelsey was a member of the committee to raise the first regiment of Suffolk County in 1775, served as a corporal in Captain John Wickes’s Company in Colonel Josiah Smith’s Regiment and “at various times crossed to Connecticut on service in the Patriot cause.” He further noted that Stephen Sr. signed the Articles of Association in Huntington on May 8, 1775, and that records were kept at the First Church of Huntington and in Old Times in Huntington (page 56) by Henry C. Platt.
The 1790 census shows a Stephen Kelsey living in Huntington in a household with two free white males over 16, two white males under 16, two free white females, another free person, and four enslaved people, totaling 11 household members; it is uncertain who is the head of this household. The 1800 census seems to show the household of Stephen Jr. The 1810 census reports a Stephen Kelsey living in Huntington with one male over 45 and one female 16 through 25; it is unclear who this Stephen Kelsey is.
Find A Grave reports that Kelcy died on June 15, 1812, at the age of 80 and is buried at the Old Burial Hill Cemetery, commonly called the Old Burying Ground, in Huntington. The Abstract of Graves of Revolutionary Patriots notes the burial of a Stephen Kelcy at Old Huntington Cemetery (no year given). As per “Cemetery Inscriptions from Huntington, Long Island,” compiled by Josephine C. Frost in 1911, there was a gravestone in the Old Burying Ground inscribed with Stephen Kelcy Sr.’s name and noting that he died on June 15, 1812, at the age of 80 years, 6 months, and 7 days.