Series 11 - Rev. John Hadden Keppel letters

73pp

Roxanne Mankin of Berkeley, California, owners of the Keppel letters, donated reproductions of the letters to Kerby A. Miller.

Photocopies of five letters sent by or to Reverend John Haddon Keppel (1840-1911), as well as a 1911 newspaper obituary from Oakland, California and Kerby A. Miller’s notes on Reverend Keppel.
Per Miller: ‘Keppel was a Methodist minister who emigrated to Canada to join his parents and siblings c.1863. He seems to have resided in Wexford town - also the former home of his future wife, Nannie (Tobias?) - and in Kingstown, although he seems to have gone to school in the north, perhaps Coleraine. He was intensely pious, given to writing poetry, usually on devotional themes. Most of the letters here are merely notes written to him before his emigration by other Wesleyan ministers in various parts of Ireland. There are also some letters of recommendation on his behalf, to smooth his way in Canada.
The only letter of major interest is the last one, a long but incomplete letter to his future wife. Keppel was then travelling in upstate New York, visiting his parents and siblings who then lived in Utica. Keppel himself had a circuit of churches then in Ontario. His brothers are skilled laborers, carpenters, blacksmiths, plumbers, etc., all living with his parents, evidently quite comfortably. He notes that his father has been disappointed in emigrating, and has had a difficult time getting and/or keeping a book-keeping position - his trade- since methods vary so widely from Ireland to America. He also notes that Britons - he identifies himself as such, not as Irish - have wrong ideas about the U.S., that life in New York (although not in the west or south) seems just as civilized and comfortable as in the "old country."
Like most fiercely evangelical Irish Protestants, Keppel was a wholehearted supporter of the North in the Civil War, identifying its cause with that of universal freedom, abolition of slavery, etc. Unfortunately, Keppel makes no mention of Irish affairs or conditions, Catholic vs. Protestant relations there or here, etc. His letters are not the least bit nostalgic; he seems fully assimilated and content. Information about his subsequent career in the U.S. can be gleaned from his obituary; for a time, he was an administrator in a college in Iowa.’