J. E. Keeler of Arbon, settler and road chairman, 1909–1932

On Wednesday, October 5, 1932, the Pocatello Tribune printed a short item from Arbon: J. E. Keeler, who farmed there and was 62, had shot himself at home that morning, and a note he left spoke of money troubles. But Ed Keeler, as the Arbon columns sometimes called him, had been in the valley's news for more than twenty years.

A newer settler

The American Falls Press of April 3, 1909, listing a week's homestead filings at the land office, included James E. Keeler on the southeast quarter of section 27, township 10 south, range 33 east. His wife was Julia Ann Robinette Keeler. Their daughter Mildred had been born in 1907 at Osage, Saskatchewan, according to her obituary.

By July 1911 the Press counted Keeler with G. S. and John Butler and G. W. Allard, "all new settlers," who would market some 25,000 bushels between them, and said many thought he had the best oats in the valley, standing four feet high. That fall he and his neighbors brought home a self-feed threshing machine, owned by "Butler, Keeler, Swim et al." The Pocatello Tribune wrote in July 1913:

J. E. Keeler has his 160 in splendid condition and has 160 acres state land leased and in wheat, on which a delightful crop is growing.

That September he was elected a director of the new valley telephone company, and in October the Press reported that he had threshed 4,300 bushels of wheat, and 1,500 bushels of dry-land oats from twenty acres. In 1914, after the frost of June, he brought American Falls the news that no more than a third of Bannock Valley's wheat would be harvested; the same item said neighbors had urged him to run for county commissioner. He was the Democratic nominee for the Second District that fall, but the Republican, M. E. Walker of Rockland, won the seat.

He was clerk of the District 12 school board in 1915 and managed a ball team. At the literary society in February 1916, debating whether Arbon should have a high school, he took the negative and Mrs. Keeler the affirmative; the judges gave it to her side. In March 1917 the Press wrote:

J. E. Keeler is one of the progressive newer settlers. He homesteaded 160 acres a few years ago. Now he has a fine large home, labor saving machinery and also purchased 200 more of improved land.

Sons in the war, winters in town

Three Keeler sons served in the First World War: Claude, the eldest, who enlisted at Portland and wrote home from France; Jesse, in the Navy; and Louis, who had joined the marines about 1911 and was with the army in Texas in 1918. In May 1918 the Keelers had a service flag of three stars. A nephew of Mrs. Keeler, Mirlan Hallett of Kansas City, came to live with them in 1919 after being wounded in the Argonne.

From late 1917 the family spent winters in Pocatello so that Nina, Howard and Mildred could go to school, and in December 1918, as far as the blurred column can be read, they bought a new modern home there. In the spring of 1919, and again in 1922, the Arbon column noted Ed Keeler moving back out to the farm.

Roads and wheat

In April 1919 he was chairman of Highway District No. 3, calling for bids to gravel fifteen miles of the Bannock Creek road. With George M. Houk and Roy Lindley he was still a commissioner in 1922, when the district reported $3.60 in the bank and $2,410.24 in unpaid bills and interest. In August 1921 a Mr. Keeler, very probably Ed, bought an International truck and was making two trips a day to Schiller, where the Wheat Growers Association's grain was handled. In a recollection preserved on the David Thomas Lusk page, his daughter Nina remembered him as the man neighbors asked to take a pearl-handled gun away from a newcomer at a Pioneer Day party.

Jesse, who had married Ruth Evans in 1915, died in a government hospital in Washington in September 1925 and was to be buried at Pocatello with American Legion honors.

What the papers do not say

The papers read for this post say little of Ed Keeler after 1922, though the "J. H. Keeler" on an Arbon wheat-warehouse committee in 1927 was probably he. The 1932 item does not say what his financial troubles were, which son was at the farm that morning, or where he was buried. It counted four surviving children, but the earlier columns name six Keeler children, of whom Jesse had died in 1925, which would leave five. Yet Jesse's 1925 funeral notice had already listed only two brothers and two sisters; the papers read here do not explain why.

The Keeler name stayed at Arbon. When state highway officials set out in August 1943 to look over the dusty road that carried wheat to Schiller, the head of the Power County farm bureau, "Jess Keeler of Arbon," was to ride along. He was very probably Ed's grandson, Jess T. Keeler, the son of Jesse and Ruth.

On this site: the frost and his 1914 campaign in The frost year and William Allard goes to the legislature; his sons' service in Before the draft; the highway district in A new road in a dry year and Arbon road money and the wheat haul of 1921; Ruth Keeler's years at the Arbon post office; and the harder years in the foreclosures of 1920–1925.

The story as reported

Pocatello Tribune, October 5, 1932, page 8. The original article is under copyright; this is our own report of what it said.

The Pocatello Tribune of Wednesday, October 5, 1932, carried a few lines from Arbon, written that same day, on the death of J. E. Keeler. Keeler, who farmed in the Arbon country, was 62. He died at once from a revolver shot he fired himself at his own house, at about 9:30 a.m.

The death was looked into by L. E. Davis, the sheriff at American Falls. According to Davis, Keeler had written of his money troubles in a note, and those troubles were believed to explain what he did.

His wife was away on a visit to Pocatello when it happened. A married son of the Keelers, whom the item did not name, was at the farm, and so was the son's wife. Besides his widow, the item counted four children among those he left, and named none of them.

The McHan mortuary in Pocatello received the body. Nothing was said of a funeral.