MG-76. HORACE A. KEEFER PAPERS, 1881-1934.
Horace A. Keefer, the son of Major John Brua Keefer of Harrisburg, was a clerk at the Paxton Furnaces, Harrisburg. In 1879 he became superintendent of the South Mountain Mining and Iron Company, Pine Grove Furnace, Cumberland County that was owned by Jay Cooke in the 1880s. He also served as president of the K.C.& L. Railway, Wallula, Kansas during the 1890s and was Populist member of the Kansas Legislature from 1896 to 1900. The papers contain incoming and outgoing correspondence relating to political and economic matters and histories of Pine Grove Furnace and the iron industries of Dauphin County. His manuscript, "Recollections Historical and Otherwise Relating to Old Pine Grove Furnace, 1770-1928," mentions that "the forge workers were all negroes, and a finer lot of men I never worked with."