I am trying to determine who took thousands of kegs of the southern Missouri State Guard gunpowder out of Jefferson City by river steamer (which one?) to help hide it from the approaching Union army coming to seize the capitol city in June 1861. Whoever it was dropped it off to waiting southern sympathizers at docks along the Missouri River upriver from Jeff City where it was taken off by the wagonload and secreted across the countryside until needed by southern forces. Some of it was probably taken out of hiding for use in the siege of Lexington in September 1861, and the Union military kept finding various caches of it for the next two years or so. Who knows, some of it may still be mouldering under some old barn or church even today.

Jim McGhee helped me with a few references and there is brief mention of this in some of the old histories of Cole, Cooper, Carroll, and Saline Counties--but with little detail. Some of these accounts attribute the feat to a Captain Kelly of the MSG, and, indeed, Captain Joseph M. Kelly of the St. Louis "Washington Blues" and his company were responsible for escorting most of this powder from St. Louis to Jefferson City in May 1861, according to Richard Peterson, Jim McGhee, Kip Lindberg, and Keith Daleen in their landmark 1995 "Price's Lieutenants" (hi, guys)on page 291. This same work also tells us that there were a few other "Captain Kelly"s in the MSG, so I cannot assume too much.

Can anyone give me specifics on who took the powder out of Jeff City and how they did it?