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CHARLES J. KEIM, M.D

Portrait and Biographical Record –  Pg. 351

Kindly submitted: Nancy Tweedie

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

 

 

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