William H. Keating Notebooks, American Philosophical Society

Table of contents

Abstract

A mineralogist and chemist associated with the University of Pennsylvania (1822-1828), William H. Keating was a central figure in the scientific community in Philadelphia during the 1820s and 1830s. Active in the American Philosophical Society and Academy of Natural Sciences, and a founding member of the Franklin Institute, Keating was official geologist on Stephen Harriman Long's expedition to the Great Lakes in 1823 and spent three years in the late 1820s surveying the mineral resources of Mexico.

The William H. Keating notebooks include three cash books (daybooks of cash expenditures, 1830-1839) and a book containing surveys of Keating lands in Potter County, most undertaken by Silas McCarty for William's father John Keating (1801-1818). The surveys associated with John Keating are an interesting record of land investment and speculation in the northern tier of Pennsylvania. William Keating's meticulous cash books provide a detailed record of his domestic expenses, philanthropic involvements (donations to the Catholic Church, the Prison Society), his reading (newspapers and books are listed individually), socializing (theatre tickets, Assembly fees), and a variety of miscellaneous expenditures ranging from purchase of a lithograph of Dugald Stewart to a table lamp from C. Cornelius. His accounts also include lists of servant's wages and wages for washerwomen.

Background note
Scope & content
Administrative information
Additional information
- Related material
Added entries
Contact information
Collection inventory

Background note

The mineralogist and chemist William Hypolitus Keating was born in Wilmington, Delaware, on August 11, 1799. The son of Baron John Keating, an Irishman by ancestry and former colonel in the French Army, William was educated at the University of Pennsylvania (AB, 1816) and studied mining in both France and Switzerland before joining the faculty at his alma mater in 1822. As the newly minted Professor of Chemistry and Mineralogy (1822-1828), he rapidly immersed himself in the city's vibrant community of mineralogists and chemists.

A capable field geologist, Keating accompanied Stephen Harriman Long's second expedition in 1823 as official geologist and spent three years in mineralogical exploration in Mexico, beginning in 1827. His work with Long represented one of the first topographic and mineralogical surveys of the Great Lakes, for which he was given responsibility for compiling and publishing the results as Narrative of an Expedition to the Source of St. Peter's River : Lake Winnepeek, Lake of the Woods, &c., &c. Performed in the year 1823 (Philadelphia, 1824). Locally, he was as leading member of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia as well as one of the motive forces behind the establishment of the Franklin Institute in 1824. He was also an active member of the American Philosophical Society, serving both as Secretary (1823-1827, 1832) and Councillor (1831, 1836-1840), as well as a member of several committees.

In addition to his scientific interests, Keating studied law and was engaged in a number of business enterprises. He died in London, England, on March 17, 1840, while negotiating a mortgage loan for the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad Co., of which he had been manager from 1835 to 1838.

Scope and content

Administrative information

Restrictions

None.

Provenance

Gift of Mark Willcox, February 2000 (accn. no. 2000-108ms).

Preferred citation

Cite as: William H. Keating Notebooks, American Philosophical Society.

Processing information

Catalogued by rsc, 2004.

Additional information

Related material

As an active member of the APS, Keating appears frequently as a correspondent in the APS Archives, and as a correspondent of Charles Lucien Bonaparte (Film 542) and John Torrey (Film 628).

Keating, William H., Account of Jeffersonite, a New Mineral Discovered at the Franklin Iron Works (Philadelphia: Harding, 1822). Call no.: 549 P19 v.1, no.25.

Keating, William H., Considerations Upon the Art of Mining, to Which are Added, Reflections on its Actual State in Europe, and the Advantages Which Would Result from an Introduction of this Art Into the United States (Philadelphia: Carey and Sons, 1821). Call no.: 622 K22.

Keating, William H., Narrative of an Expedition to the Source of St. Peter's River : Lake Winnepeek, Lake of the Woods, &c., &c. Performed in the year 1823 (Philadelphia: Carey and Lea, 1824). Call no.: 917.3 L85n.

Keating, William H., Syllabus of a Course of Mineralogy and Chemistry, as Applied to Agriculture and the Arts (Philadelphia: s.n., 1822). Call no.: Pam. v.1147, no.8.