Wilhelmena Rhodes Kelly

Biography

Wilhelmena Rhodes Kelly (née Rhodes December 11, 1946 – October 16, 2019) was an African-American genealogist who traced her American lineage to the April 5, 1614, union of Pocahontas and John Rolfe. She was also a member of the Jamestowne Society. In 2019 she became the New York State Regent and a member of the National Board of Management, making her the highest-ranking woman of color in the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution (NSDAR) since its founding in 1890. She was a pioneer of African-American genealogy. Born and raised in Brooklyn, she was a local Brooklyn historian and member of the Society of Old Brooklynites (SOB), one of the borough's oldest civic organizations. She was the author of books on Bedford-Stuyvesant as well as the Crown Heights and Weeksville sections of Brooklyn, and family genealogy books tracing her family's American roots.

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