• Joseph first traveled to Utah with the small, fast-paced Orson Hyde Company of 1850.  However, according the the 1850 federal census (taken in late September,) he returned to his family in Pottawattomie County, Iowa this same year.  A secondary source says that he was a school examiner at Springville, Utah in 1851-1852.  According to the 1852 Bishop's Report he was living at Hobble Creek (Springville.)  His name also appears at Springville on the records of the Utah Territorial Militia in July 1853.  He married Elizabeth Potter in the Endowment House in 1854.  In 1856 & 1857 he served a church mission to Australia.  In the 1860 census of Utah he is "Josh" Kelly of Sptingville.   Contemporary sources sometimes spell his surname "Kelley."

Orson Hyde Company (1850)

• Age at Departure: 44

Company Unknown (1851)

• Age at Departure: 44
• Head of Household

Sources

• 1850 Iowa Census, Pottawattamie County.
• 1860 Utah Census, Utah County.
• "Correspondence of the Frontier Guardian," Frontier Guardian, 22 January 1851, 2.
• Find a Grave
• "From the Plains," Frontier Guardian, 4 September 1850, 2.
• Joseph Ellis Johnson diary excerpts, in J. E. J. Trail to Sundown (1961) by Rufus David Johnson, 124-26.
• Joseph Ellis Johnson letter to Beloved Friends in J. E. J. Trail to Sundown (1961) by Rufus David Johnson, 121-24.
• "Registry of Names of Persons Residing in the Various Wards as to Bishops' Reports, Great Salt Lake City, Dec. 28th, A.D. 1852" in Key to Migration Sources, Great Britain and North America: A Manual for Students Attending the Second Annual Priesthood Genealogical Research Seminar, June 19-23, 1967 (Provo: Brigham Young University Division of Continuing Education, 1967), edited by Norman Edgar Wright. 
• Utah, Territorial Militia Records, 1849-1877.