Thomas Kelso

Thomas Kelso (1784–1878) was an Irish-American philanthropist and businessman, who was born in Clones, a market town in the north of Ireland, August 28, 1784. He died on the morning of July 26, 1878 at his home of many years on East Baltimore Street in Baltimore, Maryland, at the age of 94.

The parents of Kelso died when he was a child. He had two older brothers and a sister. Kelso came to the United States at age seven in 1791, arriving August 2 with his older brother John. The Kelso boys' oldest brother George was already in the U.S. working as a school teacher, and was known to be in the Baltimore vicinity. By chance, the three brothers were reunited while [John and Thomas?] were visiting the school George taught in. With $100 from George, the three began a successful butchering business. In 1807 he married Miss Ellen Cross, daughter of John and Jane Cross, well known and highly respected citizens of Cecil County in northeast Maryland.

His daughter, Mrs. Jane Kelso Guiteau, later the widow of the Rev. S. Guiteau, never recovered from her father's death and died suddenly in December 1878, at the landmark Carrollton Hotel, at the northeast corner of Light and German (now Redwood) Streets.

One of the most prominent and influential citizens of his adopted home city in the 19th Century. During his career, he was a director in the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad for 37 years, which built its southern terminus in 1849-1850, east of the harbor "basin" (today's modern "Inner Harbor") at President and Fleet Streets of the President Street Station, (which is today the Baltimore Civil War Museum, with its landmark architectural design, the oldest big city train depot left in America and a historic site in the American Civil War for the infamous "Pratt Street Riots" with the "First Bloodshed of the Civil War" of April 19, 1861). Kelso was also the president of the Baltimore Equitable Fire Insurance Company, one of the oldest such fire insurers in the nation. vice president and director in the First National Bank of Baltimore, principal Director and principal stockholder in the Baltimore Steam Packet Company (locally famous as "The Old Bay Line") and the Seaboard and Roanoke Railroad Company, president of the Preachers' Aid Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and member and later President of the Board of Trustees of the Male Free School of Baltimore, organized 1802 under the direction of the trustees of the Methodist Episcopal Churches of Baltimore in the school room at the old Light Street Methodist Episcopal Church (between Baltimore and German (later Redwood) Streets, second site of the former historic Lovely Lane Meeting House or Chapel, (off German (now Redwood) Street, east of South Calvert Street), then known as the First Methodist Episcopal Church when constructing its 1884 "Centennial Monument of American Methodism" building at St. Paul and 23rd Streets in the Peabody Heights, now Charles Village neighborhood.

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