When Samuel Shelley was born about 1810, in Pennsylvania, United States, his father, Isaac Shelley, was 27 and his mother, Magdalena Meyer, was 24.
English: habitational name from any of the three places called Shelley (Essex, Suffolk, Yorkshire) or from Shelley Plain in Crawley (Sussex). The placenames all derive from Old English scelf ‘rock, ledge, shelf’ + lēah ‘woodland clearing’.
Irish (Laois): shortened Anglicized form of Gaelic Ó Sealbhaigh ‘descendant of Sealbhach’, a byname from the adjective sealbhach ‘having possessions, wealthy’.
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