REINHARD KELLER,
A Biographical Sketch of an Esteemed Citizen.

The news of the death of Reinhard Keller was briefly mentioned Friday, the late hour at which he passed away preventing other publication of other facts in connection with his useful life.
He was born July 22, 1834 in St. Georgen, Freiburg, in the Grand Duchy of Baden. At the age of 19 years he immigrated to this country and July 10, 1854 arrived in New York. Being a brewer by trade and not finding employment, he went to Cleveland and for a time worked an the C.C.C.& I railroad. In 1857 at the advice of a boat captain he followed the Ohio canal to Massillon, were he found employment at the old Volcano Furnace works. About January, 1855, he entered the Bridgeport mine as a coal miner, and has ever since followed that bussiness in its various stages, during his connection with it opening thirteen mines and twelve air shafts. In 1859 he took charge of the Shriver mine as pit boss. His first experience as a coal operator was in opening with others the so called German coal bank north of the Wart horst quarries which ran for a short time, and did not prove a successful venture. After leaving it in 1867 he opened a shaft and slope for the Crawford coal company one mile north of Youngtown Hill and remained in there employment until 1870, when he became ideutified with the Rhodes coal company, and opened a shaft on the Jacobs farm, knowned as the Mountain mine, and remained with them until 1881, as superintendent and general manager.
In 1881, in company with the late Hon. J.G. Warwick he opened up the Beaver Run slope at Navarre, which ran for eight years. In 1889 he and Mr. Warwich opened the Drahe mine, northwest of town on the Miller farm, and in the same year the Warwick mine on the Lutz farm. After these mines had been exhausted, he became one of the stockholders of the newley organized Upper Pigeon Run Coal Company and the Warwick Coal Company, and in these corporations held the positions of president and secretary respectively, and gereral superintendent of both, until the time of his death. As such he personally supervised the operation of the mines of these companies until a little more than a year ago, when failing health compelled him to seek relief in the climate of Florida. He returned from that state last spring but little benefitted, and his condition grew steadily worse untill death relieved him.
On September 30, 1856, he married Mary E. Oster at St. Mary's Church, Massillon. Who survives him, together eight children, as follows: Mrs. John P. Sonnhalter and Mrs. O. P. Sprenger, of Cleveland; Charles R. Keller of Portland, Ore., and John F. Keller, Mrs. G. G. Paul, Mary and Amelia Keller, of this city. Mrs. John Royer, another daughter, died in 1892. The Funeral services on Monday, at St. Mary's Church at 9:30 o'clock a.m. Will be under the direction of the St. Joseph's Benevoleut Society, of which he was a charter member.

The Massillon Independent, January 2, 1896