CHARLES J. KEIM, M.D. a skillful physician and surgeon of
Catasauqua, is also President of the Borough Council, and
is active in all public enterprises.
He has been engaged in practice here since 1875, and is therefore
widely known and occupies a high place among his professional
brethren in this vicinity.
Our subject is a native of Northampton County,
and was born in Bethlehem, March 19, 1843, in the house where his
father, Leopold, and grandfather, Valentine
Keim, was also born. This residence is an old stone
structure, one and a-half stories high, and is located on land
purchased from William Penn. The grandfather of our subject
afterward located near Bethlehem, and there died in his
thirty-third year. He was a large landowner, and engaged
extensively in agriculture. Leopold Keim,
also a tiller of the soil, resided one mile from Bethlehem, on
property which was a part of the original farm bought from the
Penns. This he sold in 1868, and
moved to Allentown, where he resided until 1882. Afterward he
made his home with our subject until his decease, in 1890, when in
his seventy-eighth year. He was a member of the Evangelical
Church, and enjoyed the esteem and confidence of all who knew him.
The mother of our subject, Mrs. Mary (Stahr)
Keim, was born in
Salisbury Township, Lehigh County, and died at the age of sixty
years. Her father, Conrad Stahr, also
a native of this county, and of German descent, was a soldier of
the War of 1812, and during the active years of his live followed
contracting and building. The parental family included four sons
and two daughters, of whom our subject was the third in order of
birth, and is the only survivor. He remained on the old farm
until reaching his thirteenth year, and then entered Wyoming
Semmary, where he was a student for
several years. Later, he continued his studies in John Lasher’s
school in Easton. After completing his education, he began
clerking in a store in Butztown, and
from that place went to Allentown, where he was employed during
the late war.
A call being made for more volunteers, in 1862 our subject
offered his services to preserve the Union, and he
was mustered in as a member of Bethlehem Company F, Fifth
Pennsylvania Home Guards. After being mustered out, he entered
the mercantile business for himself in Allentown, his store being
located at the corner of Eighth and Hamilton Streets. He
continued at that stand for eighteen months, when he purchased a
half-interest in the clothing store of T.V.
Rhoats, the firm being known for a year afterward as
Rhoats & Keim.
Our subject then purchased his partner’s interest in the business,
and continued alone for a twelvemonth, when he sold out.
It has been the desire of Mr. Keim
since boyhood to follow a professional life, and now the
opportunity presenting itself, he began reading