Images of John R. Kelso

Kelso left behind little besides his voluminous writings.  His five books: The Real Blasphemers (1883); The Bible Analyzed in Twenty Lectures (1884); Spiritualism Sustained in Five Lectures (1886); The Universe Analyzed (1887); and Deity Analyzed in Six Lectures (1890).  His manuscripts: the unfinished Government Analyzed (1892), which his wife Etta would complete; “The Works of John R. Kelso in Manuscript,” the eight-hundred-page folio volume; the 519- page “Miscellaneous Poems, Speeches, Lectures, Etc.”; and his autobiography, a quarter million words written in fourteen school composition books.

Teacher, Preacher, Soldier, Spy Figure 15.1: “John R. Kelso’s Complete Works in Manuscript,” 1873, title page.  Photo courtesy Huntington Library, San Marino, California.

Lots of pages, lots of words.

But although he lived in the age of photography, there are only a few images of Kelso’s face.

The family owns a photograph, taken early in the Civil War:

Teacher, Preacher, Soldier, Spy Figure 6.1: John R. Kelso, c. 1861. Photo courtesy Martin Dieu and Holly Elwood.

Later in the war, Kelso had a carte de visite made:

Teacher, Preacher, Soldier, Spy Figure 10.1: John R. Kelso, c. 1863.  John R. Kelso, carte de visite, folder 25, Charles Lanham Collection, State Historical Society of Missouri, Columbia.  Photo courtesy of the State Historical Society of Missouri.

The State Historical Society of Missouri also has his Congressional portrait:

Teacher, Preacher, Soldier, Spy Figure 12.1: John R. Kelso, c. 1865-7.  Portrait of US Representative John R. Kelso, Springfield, Missouri, Charles Lanham Collection, State Historical Society of Missouri, Columbia.  Photo courtesy of the State Historical Society of Missouri.

Two decades later, this engraving served as the frontispiece to his book, The Bible Analyzed:  

Teacher, Preacher, Soldier, Spy Figure 16.2: John R. Kelso, c. 1884.  John R. Kelso, The Bible Analyzed in Twenty Lectures (New York: Truth Seeker Office, 1884), frontispiece.  Photo courtesy Homer Babbidge Library, University of Connecticut, Storrs, Connecticut.

This illustration is included in his posthumously published Government Analyzed (1892): 

Teacher, Preacher, Soldier, Spy Figure 17.4: John R. Kelso, c. 1890.  John R. Kelso, Government Analyzed (Longmont, CO: Privately printed, 1892), frontispiece.  Photo courtesy of the Huntington Rare Book and Manuscript Library, San Marino, California.

Beyond that, Kelso appears in a group photograph of a Modesto, California Teacher’s Institute in 1880 (Teacher, Preacher, Soldier, Spy Figure 15.2), and may be a blurry unidentified figure in a photo of a Colorado camping trip (Teacher, Preacher, Soldier, Spy Figure 17.3).  Descendants remember an oil painting, almost certainly painted by his wife Etta.  But Kelso was a controversial figure even in his own family.  The portrait was consigned to an attic and then, sometime in the twentieth century, disappeared.

The strangest appearance of Kelso’s visage is in his 1887 book, The Universe Analyzed.  An illustration entitled “Arbor Hominis” (probably drawn by Etta) portrays a tree of evolutionary life, from protozoans to humanity.  There at the very top, as the pinnacle of cosmic evolution, representing the Caucasian apex of five human races, is John R. Kelso. 

Teacher, Preacher, Soldier, Spy Figure 16.3: “Arbor Hominis,” in John R. Kelso, The Universe Analyzed (New York: The Truth Seeker Co., [1887]), facing p. 156.  Photo courtesy Library of Congress, Washington, DC.