Finis Richmond Keele
Finis Richmond Keele was born on 3 March 1857 in Bedford County, Tennessee. His parents, Milton Jackson Keele and Mary Ann Hall, brought the family to Texas, and his father died there in 1870 and is buried at Salado in Bell County. His mother lived on near Temple until 1900. In 1886 the Christian Messenger, a church paper printed at Bonham, listed him as "F R Keele, Temple."
He married Nancy Ella Howell, a daughter of Theodore Freelen Howell of Burnet County. Their children were Pansie Maude, born in 1894, Freelan Ganaway, born at Burnet in 1897, and Bettye Annie, born in Burnet County in 1899.
In Burnet County he was two things at once. On weekdays he kept a store. In the winter of 1902 the Burnet Bulletin carried his notices week after week: "Bring your Butter and Eggs to F. R. Keele," "Go to F. R. Keele's for Cheap Groceries," "Bring your Hides and Furs to F. R. Keele," each signed "Fair dealing and courteous treatment to all. F. R. KEELE." On Sundays he was Elder Keele. The same paper reports him holding a meeting "just across the river at Double Horn" in 1903, marrying couples, preaching funerals at the Odd Fellows Cemetery, and being "almost entirely rained out" one Sunday in May 1905.
By 1906 he had moved west to Schleicher County, and he wrote home to the Burnet paper to describe it. The letter is told in his lore. In the fall of 1906 he advertised in Burnet for "a family to pick forty acres of cotton" at El Dorado. He stayed. In 1916 he advertised land near the town to "anyone desiring school conveniences." In 1918 the Eldorado paper reported that he had placed an order with the local Ford dealer.
Nancy Ella died at Eldorado in April 1926, with her brother Dr. A. Howell at her bedside. Finis lived another eleven years. In 1928 the Eldorado Success noted a visit from "Mrs. Gregg's father and sister, F. R. Keele and Miss Pansie Keele." He died at San Angelo on 31 May 1937, aged 80, and is buried beside Ella in Eldorado Cemetery. A note left with his grave calls him an evangelist who preached the gospel of Jesus Christ.
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Cite: Heirology, "Finis Richmond Keele (1857-1937)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/finis-richmond-keele-1857-1937-dcd9e2.