What happened to Carl Ellan Kelley: Life story of Aretha Franklin's sister

Every famous family has a story that stays out of the spotlight, and for the Franklins, that story belongs to Carl Ellan Kelley. She spent her life several steps away from the fame that surrounded her father and her celebrated half-sister, Aretha Franklin, the Queen of Soul. Yet Carl Ellan's story, one of resilience built quietly out of public view, deserves to be told with the same care historians have given the rest of the Franklin family.

Key takeaways

• Carl Ellan Kelley was born on 17 November 1940, in Memphis, Tennessee, United States of America.
• She was the daughter of Baptist minister and civil rights leader Rev. C. L. Franklin and a 12-year-old member of his congregation, Mildred Jennings.
• Carl Ellan Kelley worked for many years as a nurse, reportedly had two children, and died of a heart attack at her Detroit home on 30 January 2019.
• Aretha Franklin acknowledged her half-sister in life, naming her for a $50,000 bequest in one of the handwritten wills discovered after Aretha died in 2018.

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Profile summary

Who was Carl Ellan Kelley?

Carl Ellan Kelley was reportedly a nurse based in Detroit, Michigan, United States of America. She was born on 17 November 1940 and died on 30 January 2019.

Carl Ellan Kelley's cause of death was a heart attack. She is best remembered as the half-sister of late singer Aretha Franklin.

Carl Ellan Kelley's background

Carl Ellan Kelley was the daughter of Rev. C. L. Franklin, the celebrated American Baptist minister and civil rights activist who later became pastor of New Bethel Baptist Church in Detroit. Her birth was not the joyful occasion most families celebrate.

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Franklin fathered Carl Ellan with Mildred Jennings, a 12-year-old member of his congregation at New Salem Baptist Church in Memphis. He was pastor of the church in the late 1930s and early 1940s, and he was 25 at the time.

The circumstances of Carl Ellan's birth were unfavourable, so she was raised largely by her grandmother. The relationship between Carl Ellan Kelley and Mildred Jennings is not known in detail, but the two were separated after Carl's birth.

Carl grew up with limited contact with her father and his other children throughout much of her early life. She had five half-siblings on her father's side. Their names are Erma, Carolyn, Aretha, Rev. Cecil, and Vaughn, and nearly all of them found some connection to music.

Carl's half-sister, Aretha Franklin, became one of the most influential singers in American history, celebrated worldwide as the Queen of Soul.

Erma, Aretha Franklin's sister, battled throat cancer before eventually passing away on 7 September 2002. Until her death, Erma was a talented singer in her own right, known for her soulful voice and contributions to the music industry.

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What happened to Mildred Jennings?

Carl Ellan Kelley's mother, Mildred Jennings, was a young congregant at C. L. Franklin's Memphis church when Carl was born. Franklin faced no legal consequences for what happened.

However, Jennings was separated from her newborn daughter and effectively banished from her home and church community. She was sent to live with relatives instead.

On the other hand, C. L. Franklin relocated to Detroit, where he built his reputation as pastor of New Bethel Baptist Church and became a nationally recognised figure in the civil rights movement.

Carl Ellan Kelley's personal life

Carl Ellan Kelley lived a quiet, private life, distanced from the media attention that followed her father and her more famous half-siblings.

It remains unclear whether she ever married, but she reportedly had two children named Charles G. Smith and Herman E. Wheatley III.

She spent many years working as a nurse. Carl rarely discussed her family background or her connection to Aretha Franklin publicly.

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Carl Ellan Kelley and Aretha Franklin: the relationship between the two sisters

Carl Ellan Kelley and Aretha Franklin are half-sisters, sharing the same father. Aretha was an American singer, songwriter, pianist, and civil rights activist whose six-decade career brought her 18 Grammy Awards and a permanent place in music history.

Carl Ellan, born into the same family under far more painful circumstances, never sought or received that kind of visibility. Despite growing up largely apart, Aretha recognised Carl Ellan as family well into adulthood, a detail that later surfaced publicly through Aretha's estate.

In one of the handwritten wills discovered in Aretha's Detroit home after her 2018 death, she left her half-sister $50,000, which was a quiet, concrete gesture of belonging for a sibling.

Carl Ellan Kelley's cause of death

Carl Ellan Kelley was found dead at her home in Detroit on 30 January 2019, several months after Aretha Franklin's death. Her cause of death was later confirmed as a heart attack. She had reportedly struggled with heart problems for some time before she died at 78.

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If you look up Carl Ellan Kelley on Find a Grave, it is clear that she was laid to rest at Woodlawn Cemetery in Detroit. It is the same cemetery where her father and several of her half-siblings are buried.

Carl Ellan Kelley's legacy and significance

Carl Ellan Kelley's life is a story of a woman who did not choose the circumstances of her birth, yet built a stable, private, and dignified life anyway. She worked for years in nursing and raising a family, largely on her own terms.

In a family defined publicly by fame, faith, and a few scandals, Carl Ellan Kelley's significance lies in the proof that not every member of a famous family seeks or needs the spotlight to live a life of substance.

Her half-sister's decision to include her in a final will suggests that the bond between them was never entirely severed despite living completely different lives.

What happened to Aretha Franklin as a child?

Aretha Franklin's childhood carries an uncomfortable echo of her half-sister's origins. Aretha's mother, Barbara, separated from C. L. Franklin when she was young and died when Aretha was only ten.

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Aretha and her siblings were largely raised in Detroit under their father's household, immersed early in the church and gospel music that would shape her sound.

At only 12, Aretha became pregnant with her first son, Clarence, and had her second son, Edward, two years later, at 14. The American singer's adolescence was marked by early motherhood within circumstances that were never fully explained publicly during her lifetime.

Who is the real father of Aretha Franklin's first child?

Carl Ellan Kelley's story turned out not to be the only hidden paternity secret in the Franklin family. For decades, it was believed that Aretha's eldest son, Clarence, was fathered by a childhood friend named Donald Burke. Clarence was born in 1955 when Aretha was only 12.

However, one of the handwritten wills discovered in Aretha's home after her 2018 death identified a different man, Edward Jordan Sr., as Clarence's biological father.

Edward Jordan Sr. is the same man later acknowledged as the father of Aretha's second son, Edward, who was born in 1957.

Who was the love of Aretha Franklin's life?

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Aretha Franklin had several significant relationships over her lifetime, including her marriages to Ted White and actor Glynn Turman. She was also in a long relationship with road manager Ken Cunningham.

Even so, the man most widely described as the love of her life was Willie Wilkerson, a former firefighter she met in the 1980s. The two remained close for roughly three decades, through to her death in 2018.

Franklin often called him her forever friend. Talking about their relationship, Aretha Franklin said:

I’m glad that he could make the distinction between the lady and the artist. Because a lot of men can’t.

What happened to Aretha's father?

C. L. Franklin's later years were marked by tragedy. On 10 June 1979, he was shot twice at close range during what was believed to be an attempted robbery at his home on Detroit's west side.

He fell into a coma and never recovered, remaining unconscious for the next five years until he died in 1984. His children moved him back to his home partway through that period and arranged round-the-clock nursing care for him.

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Latest news and continued interest in the Franklin family

Interest in the wider Franklin family story remains active. The dispute over Aretha's handwritten wills, including the one that named Carl Ellan as a beneficiary and revealed Edward Jordan Sr.'s paternity, was finally resolved in 2023. A jury ruled her 2014 handwritten will valid, ending a years-long legal battle among her sons.

FAQs

• Who is Carl Ellan Kelley's mother? Her mother was Mildred Jennings, a 12-year-old member of Rev. C. L. Franklin's congregation when Carl Ellan was born in 1940.
• What was Carl Ellan Kelley's cause of death? She died of a heart attack at her home in Detroit on 30 January 2019 at age 78 after reportedly struggling with heart problems for some time.
• Who is the real father of Aretha Franklin's first child? Aretha's handwritten will identified Edward Jordan Sr. as the biological father of her first son, Clarence, rather than Donald Burke, who had long been assumed to be his father.
• Who was the love of Aretha Franklin's life? Willie Wilkerson, her partner for roughly three decades until she died in 2018, is most widely described as the love of her life.
• What happened to Aretha Franklin as a child? Aretha lost her mother at age 10, was raised largely in her father's Detroit household, and was immersed in gospel music. She became pregnant with her first child at 12 and her second at 14.
• What happened to Aretha's father? Rev. C. L. Franklin was shot during an attempted robbery at his Detroit home in June 1979. He fell into a coma and died five years later.

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Carl Ellan Kelley's life was marked by tragedy at its very start, but also by quiet resilience and dignity in the decades that followed. She overcame the painful circumstances of her birth to build a private, stable life as a mother and a nurse. Remembered by her children and grandchildren as a caring presence, and acknowledged by Aretha in one of her final wills, Carl Ellan Kelley brought a deeply human chapter to the wider history of the Franklin family.

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Source: Briefly News