John Keep

 ( Oberlin College Faculty ) 

Keep and William Dawes both undertook a fund raising mission in England in 1839 and 1840 to raise funds from sympathetic abolitionists. Oberlin College was one of the few multi-racial and co-educational colleges in America at that time. Oberlin Digital Collections, accessed April 2009 The appeal was carefully written and supported by leading American abolitionist like William Lloyd Garrison, Henry Grew, Henry Brewster Stanton and Wendell Phillips.

Both Keep and Dawes are credited with helping to start the collection of African Americana at Oberlin College which inspired other writers. Bibliophiles and Collectors of African Americana , Charles L. Bronson, accessed April 2009 Keep appears in the large painting by Benjamin Robert Haydon which is on permanent display at London's National portrait gallery although he is obscured by other convention attendees. The people that Keep corresponded with, John Scoble, Joseph Sturge and George Thompson, and who welcomed them in London are clearly in the picture.

When Keep returned to Oberlin they had raised $30,000. Keep became the "father" to the girls at the college who lived at his house. One of the women who stayed with him was the sculptor Edmonia Lewis who eventually left after being falsely accused of poisoning other students with a reported aphrodisiac and of facing other accusations and racial prejudice.

Keep died there on February 11, 1870, and in 1889 the house was bought by the college. His house was used as a dormitory for female "indigent" students until it was rebuilt in 1912. The rebuilding was funded by Keep's granddaughter who commissioned Normand Patton to design Keep Cottage to sleep 80 women with room for 110 to dine. In 1966 the rules were changed to allow co-educational dormitories.