John R. Kelso

John Russell Kelso (March 23, 1831 – January 26, 1891) was a nineteenth-century American politician, author, lecturer and school principal from Missouri.

Biography

He was born in Franklin County, Ohio in a log cabin and had five siblings. He received home education. In 1840 his family moved to Daviess County, Missouri.

In 1851 he married Mary Adelia Moore, a daughter of the Methodist clergy, and they had two children. He became a Methodist preacher himself and also worked as a teacher. After a break-up of his marriage in 1856, he renounced his faith at the annual conference of the Methodist ministers. He started a school in Buffalo, Missouri and married Susie Barnes, one of his students. They had a child of their own in addition to two daughters from the first marriage who stayed with the father.

Kelso continued to work as a school teacher until the Civil War started.

During the war

Kelso grew up in a pro-slavery family. Though he personally came to resent both slavery and slaveholders in his later life, he kept his views to himself. After the Civil War broke out in April, he publicly declared his pro-Union sympathies and joined the Home Guard regiment of Dallas County, Missouri, where he became a major. Kelso met with Nathaniel Lyon before the Battle of Wilson's Creek. After Lyon's army was defeated at Wilson's Creek, Kelso's Home Guard regiment dispersed. Kelso then joined the Union Army as a private in the 24th Missouri Infantry. His superior officers decided that Kelso could be employed as a spy, and in August 1861 he was sent on a secret mission to Springfield, Missouri. He completed several more through the fall and winter of 1861 on orders from Gen. Samuel Ryan Curtis. In February 1862, he rejoined his regiment to take part in the Curtis' campaign against Confederate forces led by Gen. Sterling Price. In August Kelso's company was victorious in repulsing the Colonel Robert R. Lawther's Confederate raiders, and in September took part in a scouting expedition that routed the bushwhacking Medlock brothers operating from Arkansas. He took part in the Second Battle of Springfield where he fought during the daytime and spied at night. Kelso developed a reputation of a skillful and fearless soldier, who successfully completed solo and group reconnaissance missions.

After the war

Afterward, he was principal of Kelso Academy in Springfield, Missouri, from 1867 to 1869, moved to Modesto, California, in 1872 and moved again to Longmont, Colorado, in 1885.

He was an author and lecturer until his death in Longmont on January 26, 1891. Kelso was interred on his estate near Longmont and was later disinterred, cremated and scattered.

Legacy According to the historian Charles Elmo Ingenthron, Kelso is remembered in Missouri as a ruthless Union advocate: