As the only surviving female child out of eight, she also experienced firsthand the grief that comes with losing a loved one. She later wrote that these losses had "robbed the sunshine of its glory and created a shadow lasting to this present day."
As a child, Kelley suffered from chronic eyestrain, partly worsened by a bout with scarlet fever. She was mainly educated at home, studying music, dance, and drawing, as well as developing an avid thirst for knowledge. When she was able, she also attended a Quaker institution in Philadelphia, Miss Longreth's School, where she began to focus on her research and investigative skills. At the age of twelve, her sensitivities were heightened by a visit she and her two brothers made with their father on a midnight tour of a glass factory. She witnessed the dangerous conditions in which children younger than she worked, and this trip, above any observations, influenced her lifelong campaign against the exploitation of children in factories and sweatshops. She carried the memories of the trip to Cornell University at the age of seventeen.
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