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My mother's maiden name was Muriel Evelyn Mary Kellett McComb. Kellett is a family name from 3 generations earlier: her paternal grandmother was Evelyn Augusta Kellett Melhado (1856-1941) and Evelyn's mother was Jemima Hunter Kellett (1827-1902). Jemima was the daughter of Captain Robert John Napier Kellett (1797-1853) and Jemima Hunter (c.1804-1854). (The Hunters were from Ayr, probably connected with the Hunters of Abbotshill. An interesting history of the Hunter family can be found here.)
Jemima and her two unmarried sisters are mentioned in the Kellett section of Burke's Peerage and Baronetage: the first baronet was their great uncle, Sir Richard Kellett. He was a Sheriff and then Mayor of Cork in 1783. There is a brief description of a house he owned here and his library is mentioned in In Search of Cork's Collecting Traditions Part 4.
Robert's father, William Augustus, Sir Richard and another Richard Kellett (probably their father) were in partnership with Sir James Cotter in a bank in Cork, as listed in the Cork Directory for the year 1787. In 1809, the bank defaulted: in 1820 an Act was passed in the House of Lords to finalise the matter.
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In the latter part of the 1880s, some of the Kelletts were living in Dublin near the Grand Canal. In the 1879 Thom's Irish Almanac Sir William H. Kellett is shown as 19 Mespil Road, while on the opposite side of the canal at 1 Wilton Terrace is Captain Melhado, who was married to Jemima Hunter Kellett. Their daughter, Evelyn Augusta Kellett Melhado, married William Thomas McComb, who lived nearby.
My mother spoke of a Napier connection: this is confirmed by some of the Christian names. It appears that the two families both lived in Kilbarchan, Renfrewshire.
Some of the Kellett family history is Irish: old documents relating to property in Glasgow have addresses in Dublin and London. Other family members seem to have lived in both Scotland and Ireland, as well as places in mainland Europe.
Augustus Henry Kellett was Robert's brother. He was in the Royal Navy: the service record shows that he was born in 1793. A note on the back of the portrait shows that he died in 1828.
I have recently made contact with a lady in Australia, Pam Abikhair, who knows a great deal about the Kellett family. She has told me about some very interesting ancestors, including a third cousin Sir Henry Kellett (1806-1875), Vice-Admiral, whose portrait is in the National Picture Gallery. Henry Kellett was an explorer of the Canadian Arctic and has an entry in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography. His exploits, and his ship HMS Resolute, are quite well documented, for example:
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