A noteworthy Mendocino marriage had a rocky start

Otis Kelley was born July 21, 1869, the last child of Eliza and William Kelley. Otis shared a similar childhood to his siblings, attending school in Mendocino and college in the Bay Area. Unlike his sisters and older brother, Otis didn’t tour Europe as a young adult, instead choosing to live in San Francisco and work with his uncle, Samuel Blair, as an accountant.

Otis visited Mendocino frequently, enough so that he wooed a young Annie McGuire. In 1894, newspapers in San Francisco and Ukiah (but notably not in Mendocino) ran the headline “ARRESTED AT THE RACES, Otis Kelley Wanted by the Authorities of Mendocino. The Young Man’s Cousin, William S. Blair, Makes a Vain Attempt to Free the Prisoner.”