George Keats
| George Keats | |
|---|---|
Portrait of George Keats by Joseph Severn, 1817
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| Born | 28 February 1797 |
| Died | 24 December 1841 (aged 44) |
| Occupation | Poet, politician |
| Nationality | British |
George Keats (28 February 1797 – 24 December 1841) was a businessman and civic leader in Louisville, Kentucky, as it emerged from a frontier entrepôt into a mercantile center of the old northwest. He was also the younger brother of the English poet John Keats.
During the years from 1821 to 1841, Keats led a philosophical society, meant to overcome Louisville's raw culture, operating a literary salon in his living room which evolved into the Lyceum and then into the board of Louisville College, the precursor to the University of Louisville.
In 1827, Keats was elected to the Ohio Bridge Commission, laying the foundation for the river's first crossing. The state government appointed him to the board of the Bank of Kentucky in 1832. He joined the boards of ten other organizations, including the Kentucky Historical Society and the Harlan Museum, which he headed. In 1841, he was elected to the city council.
Keats, a younger brother of John Keats, was likely born in London's Moorfields district above the Swan and Hoop inn, owned by his grandfather John Jennings and managed by his father Thomas Keats. George had two other siblings: Thomas (1799–1818), and Frances Mary "Fanny" (1803–1889) who eventually married Spanish author Valentín Llanos Gutiérrez. Another brother was lost in infancy. By 1800 the family moved to Craven Street, a mile away in Hackney. When George was six, and his brother John eight, they were sent to John Clarke's liberal school in Enfield. After visiting the boys, their father was killed in a late-evening riding accident 15 April 1804. Ten weeks later, the boys' mother Frances Jennings Keats married William Rawlings, abandoning her children, including younger siblings Tom and Fanny, to live with her parents, retired in Edmonton. George was the future poet's closest friend and helpmate through Clarke's School in Enfield.
Grandfather Jennings died 8 March 1805. Their mother Frances Rawlings returned to her mother, destitute and disease-ridden, to die of consumption before 10 March 1810. Their grandmother Alice Whalley Jennings relinquished custody to guardians, including Richard Abbey, in July 1810 and subsequently died before 19 December 1814. Abbey removed the boys from Clarke's school, apprenticing John Keats to Thomas Hammond, an Edmonton surgeon, and taking George Keats into his tea wholesaling business on Pancras Lane off London's Poultry street. George, thirteen, lived in a dormitory above Abbey's counting house, while sister Fanny stayed in the Abbeys' suburban home in Walthamstow.
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