Joseph P. Kelly (1817-29 May 1870) was a Colonel in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War, during which he raised "Kelly's Irish Brigade" in Missouri.
Biography[]
Joseph Patrick Kelly was born in Ireland in 1817, and he later immigrated to the United States, working as a grocer in St. Louis, Missouri. He organized the Washington Blues militia in 1857, and he fought in the Bleeding Kansas unrest before serving in the Missouri State Guard. In 1861, he was wounded while commanding a regiment at the Battle of Wilson's Creek, and he later fought in Mississippi and in Georgia. Only 23 of the 125 men who had served under Kelly returned to St. Louis at the end of the war, and Kelly surrendered and took the oath of allegiance in Louisiana in 1865. He died in 1870.