23 Facts About George Keats

George Keats was an American businessman and civic leader in Louisville, Kentucky, as it emerged from a frontier entrepot into a mercantile centre of the old northwest.

George Keats was the younger brother of the Romantic poet John Keats.

In 1827, George Keats was elected to the Ohio Bridge Commission, laying the foundation for the river's first crossing.

George Keats joined the boards of ten other organisations, including the Kentucky Historical Society and the Harlan Museum, which he headed.

George Keats had two other siblings: Thomas, and Frances Mary "Fanny" who eventually married Spanish author Valentin Llanos Gutierrez.

When George Keats was six, and his brother John eight, they were sent to John Clarke's liberal school in Enfield.

Ten weeks later, the boys' mother Frances Jennings George Keats married William Rawlings, abandoning her children, including younger siblings Tom and Fanny, to live with her parents, retired in Edmonton.

George Keats was the future poet's closest friend and helpmate through Clarke's School in Enfield.

George Keats, thirteen, lived in a dormitory above Abbey's counting house, while sister Fanny stayed in the Abbeys' suburban home in Walthamstow.

George Keats claimed a portion of his inheritance, which he deemed inadequate to start a business in London, and laid plans to acquire farmland in southern Illinois, seeking an American fortune.

George Keats invested many of his funds in an Audubon steamboat venture, the Henderson, which failed immediately.

George Keats met John's love Fanny Brawne, without forming a positive impression.

Broke, he was dependent on gifts and loans from friends, who thought that George Keats should be contributing more from America.

George Keats ultimately settled all John's debts, but Charles Brown maligned him for twenty years, suggesting that he had deprived the poet of necessary funds.

George Keats expanded into property development, ultimately involving over thirty-five developments along Louisville's Main and Jefferson Streets.

Always working with partners, including Daniel Smith and John J Jacob, Keats culminated his building activities with the Louisville Hotel, built in 1835.

George Keats built a large home on the Jacobs' lot off Walnut Street, dubbed the "Englishman's Palace".

In 1841, George Keats completed his assimilation into Louisville's establishment by winning election to the City Council.

George Keats liquidated his holdings to do so, but before he could restore his finances, he succumbed to a gastrointestinal ailment, dying on Christmas Eve 1841.

George Keats' body was buried in Louisville's Cave Hill Cemetery.

Isabel George Keats died, a likely suicide, in the family home months after her mother's remarriage.

George Keats held John's best letters, and knowledge of the family story, while Brown owned a half-interest in a final Keats effort, a play.

None could agree on who should prepare the legacy, until 1841 when George Keats released his threatened injunction against Brown, who in turn handed his materials over to Richard Monckton Milnes, who never knew the poet.