Wanderer upon the Earth
In the mid-1850s, Kelso was a successful schoolteacher and preacher, reading through a college curriculum in his off hours and, intellectually, pushing past the boundaries of Methodist orthodoxy. But his married life was miserable. His wife Adelia was so depressed he feared for her sanity, and he discovered she had been aborting her pregnancies. By the time she confessed she didn’t love him and they agreed to divorce, he had fallen in love with one of his nineteen-year-old students. His marital troubles, however, scandalized his church and the congregation denounced him. Publicly renouncing Methodism, he became “a wifeless, homeless, churchless . . . and moneyless wanderer upon the earth.” Feeling reckless, he crossed thin ice on the Missouri River, fell through, and nearly drowned.