Horse breaker and trainer, James Kelly

I’m always on the lookout for a good story and they seem to appear in the strangest places! On a trip I met a man whose family had owned part of the huge Cattle Baron, I.P. “Print” Olive land after he had left to resettle in Kansas. The large spread was in an area around where Calloway is today.

Print Olive is a fascinating character, but I found his best friend, James Kelly, to be a character of his own making! Born in 1839 on a Texas ranch owned by Print’s parents, the son of black parents, Jim was named after Print’s father, James Olive, for whom his parents worked. This was 21 years prior to the Civil War, and in Texas when you were running a ranch, everyone was equal.

Jim and Print grew up together on that ranch. Print was considered an ornery child, but after he served with the Texas Militia during the Civil War, he came home with the goal of building his parents small ranch into a phenomenal spread and Jim Kelly was by his side all the way.

Hired by Print as a horse breaker and trainer, Jim was dependable, good with a gun, and loyal to his friend Print Olive. His horses, when trained, traded for top dollar. From the website www.wildwesthistory.org, comes the following description: “At a time when racism was strong, Jim Kelly took every man as his equal, never backed down from any man- white or black, was a top drover, had pride in himself, his race and was fearless. In 1877 when Print Olive pulled up stakes in Texas and moved his cattle operation to Nebraska, Jim Kelly was by his side.

Print’s legendary defense of his cattle holdings came to a bitter end in Nebraska when his brother, Bob Olive, was killed by Luther Mitchell when Bob was attempting to arrest a man named Ketchum for rustling Olive cattle. After Mitchell and Ketchum were arrested and being transferred by wagon for trial in the death of Bob, Print Olive, enraged by his brother’s death, waylaid the wagon and hanged the two men from an Elm tree.

The callousness of the killing (the bodies had been set on fire) found Print on trial in Hastings for second degree murder and on April 17, 1879, Print was sentenced to life in prison at the Nebraska State Penitentiary. When the sentence was reversed by a new trial in 1881, Print was released, but even his good friend, Jim Kelly, had moved on. Kelly was 42 years old at that time and had moved to Ansley where he lived until his death in 1912. He is buried in the Ansley cemetery along Highway 183.

While Kelly’s renown was shaped by his association with Olive, his skills made him the legendary figure he became. Known as a top drover (cattle herder) and an accomplished singer, he is also accredited with a song written during the long drives when cowboys sang to their cattle to calm them.

Kelly came to Nebraska after the state had cleared the way for equality for all. The Nebraska legislature had to over-ride a governor’s veto to abolish slavery in January 1861. In order to gain statehood in 1867 Nebraska removed a “whites only” voting restriction from its constitution fully addressing Nebraska’s state motto (credited by most to Isaac Wiles, legislator from Plattsmouth) adopted that same year: Equality before the Law.

We all need a chuckle these days and when I was researching, I came across this quote of Cowboy Wisdom: “ Never approach a bull from the front, a horse from the rear or a fool from any direction.” Another one that is particularly important for todays’ online intelligence (or lack thereof): “A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”

SWNGS library is open on Tuesdays and Thursdays (weather permitting, and it hasn’t permitted much lately), from 1-4 PM. We are located at 110 West C, Suite M-3. Check our Facebook page for notices concerning library hours.