Joseph Keeler was an Ontario

Ontario

Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....

 businessman and political figure. He represented Northumberland East

Northumberland East

Northumberland East was a federal electoral district represented in the Canadian House of Commons from 1867 to 1917. It was located in the province of Ontario. It was created by the British North America Act of 1867....

 in the Canadian House of Commons

Canadian House of Commons

The House of Commons of Canada is a component of the Parliament of Canada, along with the Sovereign and the Senate. The House of Commons is a democratically elected body, consisting of 308 members known as Members of Parliament...

 as a Liberal-Conservative member from 1867 to 1874 and from 1879 to 1881.

He was born in Cramahe Township

Cramahe, Ontario

Cramahe is a rural township located in Northumberland County in central Ontario, Canada.Joseph Keeler opened a store on the site of present-day Colborne about 1819. A community began to grow as other small businessmen followed suit...

, Upper Canada

Upper Canada

The Province of Upper Canada was a political division in British Canada established in 1791 by the British Empire to govern the central third of the lands in British North America and to accommodate Loyalist refugees from the United States of America after the American Revolution...

 in 1814 and educated at Upper Canada College

Upper Canada College

Upper Canada College , located in midtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada, is an independent elementary and secondary school for boys between Senior Kindergarten and Grade Twelve, operating under the International Baccalaureate program. The secondary school segment is divided into ten houses; eight are...

. Keeler was a grain and lumber merchant and also owned a wharf, warehouses and a flour mill

Gristmill

The terms gristmill or grist mill can refer either to a building in which grain is ground into flour, or to the grinding mechanism itself.- Early history :...

 at Colborne. He was also the owner of a schooner

Schooner

A schooner is a type of sailing vessel characterized by the use of fore-and-aft sails on two or more masts with the forward mast being no taller than the rear masts....

. He was postmaster there and also served as a major in the local militia. Keeler operated a printing business which produced one of the first newspapers in the region, the Colborne Transcript. He helped establish a branch of the Bank of Toronto

Bank of Toronto

The Bank of Toronto was a Canadian bank, founded on July 8, 1857 by George Gooderham, that merged with The Dominion Bank on February 1, 1955 to form the Toronto-Dominion Bank...

 at Colborne and also helped promote the development of the Trent-Severn Waterway

Trent-Severn Waterway

The Trent–Severn Waterway is a Canadian canal system formerly used for industrial and transportation purposes and now for recreational and tourism purposes, connecting Lake Ontario at Trenton to the Georgian Bay portion of Lake Huron at Port Severn...

.

On October 12th, 1848, he married Octavia Phillips. Keeler died in office in Ottawa

Ottawa

Ottawa is the capital of Canada, the second largest city in the Province of Ontario, and the fourth largest city in the country. The city is located on the south bank of the Ottawa River in the eastern portion of Southern Ontario...

 at the age of 56.

His father, Joseph Abbott Keeler, was credited with being the founder of Colborne and his grandfather, a United Empire Loyalist from Vermont

Vermont

Vermont is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. The state ranks 43rd in land area, , and 45th in total area. Its population according to the 2010 census, 630,337, is the second smallest in the country, larger only than Wyoming. It is the only New England...

also named Joseph Keeler, was one of the first settlers in the township.