‘He was called The Pathfinder’
Bartholomew Brosnan Kelliher was born at Ballyplimoth near Cordal, Castleisland on 26 December 1862, the third son and one of seven children of land surveyor John D Kelliher of Ballyplimoth (Ballyplymoth), Cordal, Co Kerry and Johanna Brosnan (or Brosnihan).[1]
Kelliher attended Kilmurry National School and the National School in Castleisland, later studying under the Jesuits and at Dublin University.[2] He gained a degree in Civil Engineering in 1885 and was apprenticed for a while in Tralee and Dublin before going to America in 1886.
In Chicago he gained employment as assistant engineer and topographer with the Union Pacific Railway from January 1887 to October 1890. He joined the Northern Pacific Railway in 1890 as Resident and Assistant Engineer until 1896 when he returned to the Union Pacific Railway as assistant engineer until 1897.
In 1897, he abandoned work on the railroads and worked the Anaconda Copper Mines of Butte, Montana as mining engineer until October 1898 when he returned to the Union Pacific Railway as Division Engineer on the Oregon Short Line. He remained there for three years during which period he held the position of Resident Engineer on the Denver North Western and Pacific Railway. He returned to Canada in 1903 and joined the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway in 1904. The following year he was appointed Chief Engineer, the GTP line completed under his direction.
In 1911, Kelliher had a close shave:
While driving a buggy near the summit of Edson on Thursday with Superintendent Fetter of the Foley, Welch and Stewart Co, as a passenger, Mr B B Kelliher, Chief Engineer of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway, was thrown from his rig and sustained severe injuries … The horse becoming frightened dashed down the mountain side, upsetting the carriage, and Mr Kelliher was thrown with considerable force on to the rocks … He is son of the late Mr John Kelliher, Castleisland, brother of Mr D B Kelliher, Editor and Proprietor, Swansea Daily Post.[3]
The following is from the Montreal Gazette of 1912:
Mr Kelliher is a Kerryman, a native of Cordal, Castleisland, and was a personal friend of the late E Keane, CE. Not only has Mr Kelliher come on top in the engineering profession, he also holds the highest position which it can offer at this side of the Atlantic. Mr Kelliher is uncle to Mr Jack Drum of Castleisland, who is well known in Irish circles in this city.[4]
On 7 April 1914, Kelliher attended a ceremonial gathering to drive the last spike on the GTP line.[5] The following editorial appeared soon after:
Kelliher is known wherever railroads are built, whether it be in India, in South America or the Rockies. Again and again interests have attempted to lure him from his beloved mountains, but they have never succeeded. To carry lines of steel through the great ranges that split the continent has not only been his work, but the joy of his life. He loves the mountains as few men love them, and for more than 20 years he has found his gigantic tasks among them … to build a great railroad through the Rockies with only a four-tenths of one per cent grade was considered not only impossible but the idea itself was looked upon as the mad vision of an idealist. Yet Kelliher accomplished this and the Grand Trunk Pacific has the lowest mountain grade of any road in the world, and the engineer doubly famous as ‘Four-tenths of One Per Cent Kelliher.’[6]
In 1914, ill health caused Kelliher to resign and return to Ireland at the outbreak of the First World War. The following year he attended a meeting at Derrybeg House, Muing West, Tralee:
The feelings of the Irish in America regarding the duty of Irishmen in the present European war were clearly evident on Sunday in a spirited address to the local corps of the Irish National Volunteers by a prominent Canadian journalist, Mr P A O’Farrell, Montreal, who with Mr B B Kelliher, Montreal, chief engineer of the Canadian Grand Trunk Railway are guests of Mr H Walsh, solicitor, and Mrs Maud Walsh, at their beautiful residence, Derrybeg.[7]
The uniformed Volunteers, headed by the Boherbee fife and drum band, marched to Derrybeg under Commander Walsh, and halted at the lawn in front of the house where the distinguished visitors were introduced:
Mr O’Farrell on coming forward said he and Mr Kelliher had come to see that old Kingdom of Kerry and its people, and to renew their youth by their visit. Mr Kelliher could boast of being a son of Kerry and Mr O’Farrell could boast with equal pride of being a son of Cork … They should remember that they in America were the greater Ireland, for while in Ireland they had four and a half millions, they had in America twenty millions of people through whose veins flowed the very same blood as flowed through their veins here in Ireland. The Irish exiles of the fourth, fifth and tenth generation were proud of their Irish blood, and the brain, the muscle and the bone of this great old Celtic stock.[8]
O’Farrell went on to speak about the war:
The battle being fought in France is not a battle for England, for Ireland, or for France, it is a war being waged in defence of liberty and the civilisation of the whole human race, and he was there to tell them, as one of the exiled Irish, that he was absolutely and entirely and completely in sympathy with those who were trying to crush the infamous military policy of the Germans.[9]
Kelliher returned to America on 29 September 1915. In 1917, he supervised the construction of the Spruce Railroad on the Olympic Peninsula for the US government. From 1921-1923 he served as assistant to the President of the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railway.
In 1923 Kelliher retired and returned to live in Ireland. He took up residence at ‘Merlyn’, Sydney Parade, Sandymount, Dublin. In 1926, he subscribed to the Drumcollogher Cinema Catastrophe National Fund inaugurated by President Cosgrave[10] and the following year, numbered among those who sympathised following the assassination of the Minister for Justice Kevin Christopher O’Higgins (1892-1927), Vice-President of the Executive Council.
Kelliher was twice married, first in Texas on 1 June 1904 to Anna Isabelle Souter (RIP September 1908) and secondly, at the Church of St John the Evangelist, Islington, London on 2 June 1915 to Johanna Mary O’Connor (‘Creusie’) of Wexford, second daughter of M J O’Connor Esq, Weston Villa, Wexford, and sister of the Solicitor-General, Sir James O’Connor (1872-1931).[11] The ceremony was performed by Right Rev Monsignor Grosch, DD, one of London’s most celebrated preachers.
‘God Bless the Bridge Builder’
B B Kelliher died in a London nursing home on 7 November 1929 and was buried in Crosstown Cemetery, Wexford, his headstone inscribed, ‘God Bless the Bridge Builder.’
Castleisland’s T M Donovan paid tribute to Kelliher’s remarkable life:
Last Sunday week, one of the most distinguished Kerrymen that ever left the Old Kingdom was buried in Wexford after a most strenuous and famous career. Mr Bartholomew B Kelliher, the great Railway Engineer of North America, was born at Cordal, near Castleisland about seventy years ago. At first he attended the Kilmurry national school under the management of the late Mr Peter Kearney and afterwards, attended the Castleisland national school under Mr D Desmond. This world-famed engineer had, as his classmates, three others who in their several callings distinguished themselves in later life: Rev Professor J O’Donovan, MA, the well-known author; Mr Dan O’Mahony, the famous African explorer and hunter, and the late Mr T O’C Brosnan, who, as historical student, Land Leaguer, Nationalist and public speaker was well known in Kerry. Castleisland ought to be proud of such distinguished sons … If ever Kerry shall institute a roll of honour the name of B B Kelliher ought to take the leading place among men of action.[12]
Johanna Mary Kelliher, widow, of ‘Merlyn’, Sydney Parade, Dublin, who seems to have resided in Paris in 1937, died at a private nursing home in Dublin on 18 November 1952.
A Lasting Memorial
In 1909 the village of Kelliher on the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway line in Saskatchewan was named after B B Kelliher, the greatest railway engineer of his time. Almost one century on, in July 2007, Kerry relatives Mary (Bea) Breen, grandniece, Shirley Higgins, great grandniece, and Christine, Rosaleen and Patricia Higgins, great great grandnieces, visited the village of Kelliher in Sascatchewan to pay homage to their ancestor.
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[1] Johanna Kelliher (née Brosnihan) died on 18 May 1883 her age 63. John Kelliher, widower, land surveyor, died suddenly at Ballyplimoth on 13 May 1890 aged 75, ‘By the visitation of God, cause unknown’ in accordance with the inquest held by coroner Thomas F Spring, Riverville, on 16 May 1890. B B Kelliher’s known siblings were Hanora born 1842, Margaret, born 1853 (married James Drum of Cordal on 20 September 1885), Mary (married James Brosnan of Tralee on 15 February 1879), Timothy, born 1860, John, present at his mother’s death on 18 May 1883. [2] Reference Information sheet from The Village of Kelliher, 23 November 2013, ‘Bartholomew Brosnan Kelleher 1862-1929 ‘God Bless the Bridge Builder.’ ‘He was at one time a pupil of Mr Dillon, of this city [Dublin]’ (Freeman’s Journal, 21 July 1905). [3] Kerry Evening Star, 17 August 1911. The following relates to Daniel B Kelliher, brother of John: ‘Mr Daniel B Kelliher, whose departure from Kerry I regret to announce, was for many years connected with the press in this, his native county … Mr Kelliher was for some time connected with leading provincial and metropolitan journals and founded a locus standi in Kerry for one of the leading provincial newspapers, the Reporter’ (Southern Reporter, 6 June 1865). ‘Mr D B Kelliher, a member of the editorial staff of the Nottingham Evening Post, has been elected a member of the Institute of Bankers which comprises the heads of the leading banking establishments in England, and of which Sir John Lubbock, the Governor of the Bank of England, is president. Mr Kelliher, who has been eighteen years connected with the home and foreign press, is son of Mr John Kelliher, Land Surveyor, Castleisland, and wrote his first newspaper paragraph for the Tralee Chronicle. He was ‘brought out’ by the late highly respected and much esteemed Mr James Raymond Eagar, who took a great interest in young literary aspirants’ (Tralee Chronicle, 8 April 1879). [4] Taken from Montreal Gazette in Kerry People, 18 January 1913. [5] Account of same in Canadian Rail Magazine (2014) no 562. [6] ‘Just what such a grade means can be understood when the fact is stated that the highest elevation the Grand Trunk Pacific reaches in crossing the Rockies is 3,712 feet, while, in comparison, the Canadian Pacific reaches an altitude of 5,329 feet at Kicking Horse Pass. The attainment of such a low grade means not only millions of dollars saved to the road and to shippers, but time saved to travellers, and greater comfort in crossing the continent. It was the ambition of the great builders of the road, generated first by President Hays, and later by President Chamberlin, to build a road-bed from coast to coast over which trains would travel ‘as smoothly as rubber-tired automobiles over a paved road.’ This idealistic dream of making a feather bed out of hard steel was actually laughed at by men who had already become famous as railroad builders. But Kelliher accomplished the feat, and today riding over the Grand Trunk Pacific from Winnipeg to the coast is an experience which proves that dreams sometimes come true. At a recent meeting of great railroad builders in London it was conceded that for workmanship, smoothness, and grade, the Grand Trunk Pacific was the greatest road in the world. And Kelliher was the man behind the guns.’ From ‘Kelliher, Master of Mountains’ by James Oliver Curwood, Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly Newspaper, edited by John A Sleicher, 10 June 1915; copy held in IE CDH 211. [7] Kerry Sentinel, 10 March 1915. ‘The Volunteers and visitors were subsequently photographed.’ Mrs Walsh was Kelliher’s future sister-in-law. [8] Ibid. [9] Ibid. [10] Forty-eight people lost their lives when a fire swept through the upstairs loft that served as a temporary cinema on 5 September 1926. https://dromheritage.ie/Library.html [11] Creusie’s other known siblings were Michael J O’Connor (1863-1937), Solicitor, Wexford; Rev Thomas O’Connor CSSR, Professor in St Peter’s College Wexford 1895-1907, subsequently curate Enniscorthy Cathedral, joined Redemptorist Order 1911, Chaplain of the Forces in France in 1915-1918; subsequently appointed to Australia and then New Zealand; celebrated his 80th birthday in Wellington in 1950; Daniel O’Connor (America); Captain William O’Connor (Sydney, Australia), Joseph O’Connor CE Grand Trunk Railway Canada; Frank O’Connor, Wexford and Mrs Annie Maud Walsh (1879-1940), Derrybeg, wife of solicitor Henry St Paul Walsh (1887-1916), first woman elected to UDC Tralee. Mrs Walsh died on 14 May 1940 at St Vincent’s Private Nursing Home, Dublin. Her daughter, Geraldine (Bubbles) died on 21 April 1933 at 16 Elgin Road, Dublin. [12] ‘Death of a Distinguished Kerryman’ by T M Donovan, Kerry News, 20 November 1929.
