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Sections: Biography Letters Bibliography
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Oscar Thaddeus Keeler
(Born: February 3, 1825 - Died: March 14, 1870)
American bookseller, publisher and autograph collector. Oscar T. Keeler was born in New York, the son of Amos Keeler (1794-Ca. 1860) and Jane Bryant (or Briant) (1804-ca. 1870). About the age of 19, he appears to have moved on his own to Columbus, Mississippi. He was married twice, first to Amanda M. Hendrick (1829-1849) on March 2, 1845 and later to Eliza Daniel Hendrick (1825-1915) on May 9, 1850. He published Keeler’s Almanac, beginning in 1845, and then annually 1847-1860. He is buried in Friendship Cemetery, Columbus, MS. In the census records for 1850 and 1860, he is listed as a merchant. A prospectus for the Mississippi Almanac of 1859 gives his profession as an Auction and Commission Merchant and General Agent.
In Godey’s Lady’ Magazine (January 1853, vol. 46, no. 1, p. 88) appears a brief notice of his Almanac:
Keeler’s Mississippi Almanac. O. T. Keeler, Columbus, Miss. — A capital little work, and its editor and publisher a most sterling man; everybody who knows him respects him. Mr. K. acts as agent in Columbus for nearly all the Philadelphia publications, and a good agent he is.
One of the treasures of his autograph collection was an 1856 manuscript for Clement Moore’s “A Visit from St. Nicholas” (now in the Huntington Library). In 1841, he was still living in New York, as attested by a request for an autograph from William Cullen Bryant, with Bryant’s reply dated September 30, 1841, noting Keeler’s address as 33 William Street. By 1842, he had evidently moved to Philadelphia.
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- E. A. Poe to O. T. Keeler - July 18, 1842 (Not in Ostrom) (“The Shroud of Philadelphia”)
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- Anonymous, Catalogue of the Entire Collection of Autographs of Mr. O. T. Keeer, Columbus, Miss. New York: Leavitt, Strebeigh & Co., December 7, 1868
- Anonymous, “Autograph Collectors,” Bizarre, for Fireside and Wayside (Philadelphia), October 18, 1853, p. 25 and October 29, 1853, p. 59. (Oscar T. Keeler of Columbus, Miss. is listed)
- Heartman, Charles F. and James R. Canny, A Bibliography of First Printings of the Writings of Edgar Allan Poe, Hattiesburg, MS: The Book Farm, 1943.
- Mabbott, Thomas Ollive, ed., The Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe (Vols 2-3 Tales and Sketches), Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1978. (Second printing 1979)
- Thomas, Dwight and David K. Jackson, The Poe Log: A Documentary Life of Edgar Allan Poe 1809-1849, Boston: G. K. Hall & Sons, 1987.
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[S:0 - JAS] - Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore - People - Oscar Thaddeus Keeler