The Kelsos

Scott’s Kelso forebears were Ulster Scots who arrived at Philadelphia in the 1760s. Robert Sylvester Kelso was born in 1806, Livingston, N.J., reared on the Ohio frontier, and migrated west to Missouri in the 1840s with his wife, Anna, their numerous children, and his Kelso brothers and their families. The R. S. Kelsos moved again, to Idaho Springs, Colo., in June of 1860 as Civil War violence broke out in northwestern Missouri. Kelso died in 1874 in Bailey, Colo., after building the first schoolhouse in the region. He is buried at the Horn Cemetery.

Fletcher Kelso, a favorite nephew, also traveled to the gold camps with his aunt and uncle. In 1864, Fletcher climbed and named Kelso Mountain (elevation 13,164), where he also discovered and prospected the some of the territory’s first silver alongside other notable Clear Creek prospectors, Irwin, Baker, and Noxon.

A number of Kelsos remained in Missouri for the war—notably Ella Kelso Noxon’s elder brother, John Russell Kelso, who joined the Union Army as a member of the 24th Missouri Infantry, the 14th Missouri Cavalry, and the 8th Missouri Cavalry, becoming captain of Company M.

Captain J. R. Kelso was elected to the House of Representatives in 1865 as an Independent (Radical) Republican from Missouri’s Fourth District and served in the Thirty-ninth United States Congress. He retired to Longmont, Colo., and was interred there. His memoirs are housed at the Huntington Library, San Marino, California.