Background
Keep was born, 20 April 1781, in Longmeadow, then a precinct of Springfield, Massachusetts Of a family of nine children he was the seventh.
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John Keep
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Education
They both attended the 1840 anti-slavery convention in London. He graduated from Yale College in 1802. Foreign a year after he was graduated he taught a school in Bethlehem, Connecticut, reading theology at the same time with the pastor, Review
Doctor Azel Backus.
Career
Keep and William Dawes toured England in 1839 and 1840 gathering funds for in Ohio. He continued his theological course for another year with Asahel Hooker, of Goshen, Connecticut, and was licensed by Litchfield North Association, 11 June 1805. Here he remained for 16 years.
In 1833 he resigned in consequence of disaffection caused by his sympathy with the "new measures" of revivalists.
This article incorporates public domain material from the Yale Obituary Record. In 1834, Keep was elected a Trustee of Keep was renowned for championing the values that eventually became renowned foreign
He championed rights for women, black students and missionary zeal. Keep was the person who casting the deciding vote in 1835 that allowed black students to enter in Ohio.
Keep and William Dawes both undertook a fund raising mission in England in 1839 and 1840 to raise funds from sympathetic abolitionists. was one of the few multi-racial and co-educational colleges in America at that time.
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 which inspired other writers. 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.
Keep died in 1870 and in 1889 the house was bought to 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.
