The Keyser family of Baltimore, Maryland accumulated wealth in the 19th and 20th centuries through mercantile businesses, inheritance, and a variety of industries, including the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, copper and iron works, and investments in land and real estate. They used some of this wealth to finance Baltimore’s public and private institutions, including Johns Hopkins University.

William Keyser was born in 1835. His parents were Samuel Stouffer Keyser, a white Baltimore iron merchant, and Elizabeth Wyman Keyser; he had a twin brother, Samuel Keyser, Jr, and a younger brother, H. Irvine Keyser, as well as a sister, Sarah Keyser (William Keyser, Memoirs, 7, 9-10, 34, 43, “Elizabeth Wyman,” Wyman Genealogy). Elizabeth Wyman Keyser was the daughter of William Wyman of Lowell, Massachusetts (“Elizabeth Wyman,” Wyman Genealogy), whose brother, Samuel Wyman, purchased Homewood House at auction from Charles Carroll III. Within the Wyman (and later, the Keyser) family, many men were named William or Samuel, historically creating confusion about the exact relationship between the Keyser and Wyman families. Elizabeth Wyman Keyser had a brother, Samuel G. (Gerrish) Wyman, who moved to Baltimore and went into business with his uncle, Samuel Wyman (later of Homewood), (Samuel G. Wyman Obituary). Since the 1940s (and possibly earlier), Hopkins affiliates have confused these two Samuel Wymans.[1] William Keyser was the nephew of Samuel G. Wyman, the great-nephew of Samuel Wyman of Homewood, and the first cousin once removed of William Wyman, Samuel Wyman of Homewood’s son. A family tree documenting the relationships of several members of the Wyman and Keyser families can be found here: https://lucid.app/documents/view/08bc7e92-9e5c-4b24-abb8-a1ee6c59a133

As illuminated by Marvis Gutierrez in their “Legacies of the Keyser-Wyman Families” project for the Hard Histories at Hopkins lab, William Keyser’s father Samuel Stouffer Keyser enslaved a man named Ned Blake. Gutierrez highlights a section of William Keyser’s memoirs describing how Samuel Stouffer Keyser first hired Blake from his enslaver, then purchased him “reluctantly…promising him his freedom in a year or two provided he was faithful and showed himself deserving” (William Keyser, Memoirs, 127). They also note that “Ned Blake, the enslaved coachman of Samuel Keyser, was considered to ‘benefit from slavery’ according to historic Johns Hopkins University Benefactor, William Keyser.” Hard Histories lab director Martha S. Jones calls William Keyser’s beliefs about his father’s slaveholding an example of Lost Cause mythology, which falsely portrayed slavery as beneficial and used paternalistic terms (“The Grounds We Walk: Marvis Gutierrez on Rethinking JHU’s Keyser Quad, and Who it Honors”).

While in William Keyser’s memoirs (in a section also highlighted by Marvis Gutierrez), William Keyser states that “no member of my family, so far as I know, except my father, ever owned a slave” (126) this is incorrect – Samuel G. Wyman is listed as the enslaver of two men and two women (all of whom are listed as manumitted) in the slave schedule of the 1850 census. It is unclear whether these four people are the ones described by William Keyser in a speech published in the August 1900 issue of “The Maryland Churchman”: “When, through his wife, [Samuel G. Wyman] came into possession of an estate in Clark county, Virginia, one of his first acts was to manumit the slaves and employ them at good wages” (“The Mary Byrd Wyman Fund,” 98). Because Samuel G. Wyman (who died in 1883) and his wife, Mary Byrd Wyman, had no children, William Keyser was one of the executors of Samuel G. Wyman’s will and became a trustee of his wife’s estate (“The Mary Byrd Wyman Fund", 96).

William Keyser married Mary (Mollie) Brent in 1858. He was a Vice President of the B&O Railroad beginning in 1870, and later was President of the Baltimore Copper Rolling and Smelting Company (“William Keyser Stricken”). William Keyser’s first cousin once removed, William Wyman, inherited a portion of the Homewood Estate along with his two siblings, Samuel Wyman, Jr. and Elizabeth (Wyman) Aldrich, upon the death of his father Samuel Wyman of Homewood in 1865. When the growing Johns Hopkins University needed to relocate its campus from Baltimore’s Mt. Vernon neighborhood in the late 1890s and early 1900s, William Keyser and William Wyman arranged for the entire Homewood site and adjacent property to go to the University. William Keyser died in 1904, several years before the first Johns Hopkins buildings were built at the Homewood campus in the 1910s (“William Keyser Stricken”).

William Keyser’s son, R. (Robert) Brent Keyser (1859-1927) was President of the Board of Trustees of Johns Hopkins University from 1903 until 1926 (and a member until his death in 1927), and he was also the President of the B&O railroad (“R. Brent Keyser Dies Suddenly at His Home”). Brent Keyser married Ellen Carr McHenry in 1888. Ellen McHenry Keyser was a descendant of one of Thomas Jefferson’s nephews, Peter Carr (R. Brent Keyser outgoing correspondence transcripts, information about Dunlora). For many years, white Jefferson family descendants falsely claimed that Peter Carr or his brother Samuel Carr fathered Thomas Jefferson’s children with Sally Hemmings. (Nancy Verrell, “Samuel Carr,” Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello). Brent and Ellen Keyser named their house in Baltimore County Dunlora after Samuel Carr’s plantation in Albemarle County, VA (R. Brent Keyser outgoing correspondence transcripts, information about Dunlora). They had three children, Juliana Brent Keyser, Ellen McHenry Keyser (Jr.), and William McHenry Keyser.

Juliana Brent Keyser Clark (1891-1975) was the oldest daughter of Brent and Ellen Keyser. She married Gaylord Lee Clark in 1921. Juliana Keyser Clark collected genealogical material on her extended family, as well as copies of news articles on family members. The Clarks had five children, Gaylord, Jr., Juliana Watts, Mathilde Holmes, Letitia Sexton, and Sally Cary Wolff.

Many people worked for the Keyser family over the years, both in their businesses and in their homes. Two of these people who are featured in the Keyser family papers are Nathaniel S. Wheat, a white man and Ida Oliver Aquilla, a Black woman. Wheat served as the secretary for the Keyser estates from 1894 until 1960 (“Nathaniel S. Wheat Dies at 83”). His name appears frequently in the Keyser business correspondence - according to a 1944 Baltimore Sun article, Wheat “handled much of Brent Keyser’s correspondence during the latter’s incumbencies as president of the board of trustees of the Johns Hopkins University, as trustee of the Johns Hopkins Hospital, of the McDonogh School, of St. Paul’s School, Concord, N.H., of the Hannah More Academy and of the Mary Byrd Wyman Memorial Association” (“N.S. Wheat to Receive Honors for Half Century’s Service”). Presumably he kept many of the Keyser Estate ledgers in the collection. Ida Oliver Aquilla worked in the home of Juliana Keyser Clark and Gaylord Lee Clark – she is listed as a maid in their household in the 1950 census. A copy of her obituary, included in the collection, states that she was born enslaved, was freed with emancipation at the end of the Civil War, and lived (and presumably worked for) various McHenry/Cary family members (maternal relatives of Juliana Keyser Clark) before she lived with and worked for the Clarks in her later years (“Mrs. Ida Oliver Aquilla”).

[1] See W.H. Buckler, “Assembling the Homewood Site” for an early example of confusion, where Buckler describes William Keyser and William Wyman as first cousins (9), presumably because he assumed Samuel Wyman (William Wyman’s father) and Samuel G. Wyman (William Keyser’s uncle) were the same person.

Sources

Buckler, W.H. “Assembling the Homewood Site.” Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University, 1941.

“Elizabeth Wyman,” Wyman Genealogy, https://wyman.org/getperson.php?personID=I17726&tree=Wyman, accessed June 13, 2023.

Guttierez, Marvis, “Legacies of the Keyser-Wyman families,” Fall 2021 https://hardhistory.jhu.edu/assets/uploads/sites/8/2022/02/Gutierrez-Legacies-of-the-Keyser-Wyman-Families-Hard-Histories.pdf, https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jaugkQFHbJ0DHaO24KPNNf2Fgdzk9pMlJ-1qdJ8HheA/edit#heading=h.hdur7k5lj858, accessed June 13, 2023.

Jones, Martha S. “The Grounds We Walk: Marvis Gutierrez on Rethinking JHU’s Keyser Quad, and Who it Honors,” Hard Histories at Hopkins Substack, February 22, 2023. https://hardhistoriesjhu.substack.com/p/the-grounds-we-walk, accessed June 14, 2023.

Keyser, William. “The Mary Byrd Wyman Memorial Fund: An Address Delivered at the Commencement of the Hannah More Academy by William Keyser, June 13th, 1900,” in “The Maryland Churchman.” August, 1900. Wyman family genealogical materials, speech about Mary Byrd Wyman fund by William Keyser, etc., 1880-1910, Box 14, Folder 28, Keyser family papers, MS.0082, Special Collections, The Johns Hopkins University.

Keyser, William, Memoirs, 1900, Box 1, Folders 1 and 2, Keyser family papers, MS.0082, Special Collections, The Johns Hopkins University.

“Mrs. Ida Oliver Aquilla,” The Baltimore Sun, January 7, 1952, Photocopies of Ida Oliver Aquilla obituaries, Juliana Keyser Clark family news articles, approximately 1920s-1952, Box 15, Folder 29, Keyser Family Papers, MS.0082, Special Collections, The Johns Hopkins University.

"N.S. Wheat to Receive Honors for Half Century’s Service,” The Baltimore Sun, June 17, 1944, and “Nathaniel S. Wheat Dies at 83; Got Keyser Estates Job on Dare,” The Baltimore Sun, February 21, 1961, Photocopies of news articles on Nathaniel Stockton Wheat, 1944-1961, Box 15, Folder 47, Keyser family papers, MS.0082, Special Collections, The Johns Hopkins University.

“R. Brent Keyser dies suddenly at his home,” The Baltimore Sun, March 2, 1927. https://baltimoresun.newspapers.com/image/373081528/clipping_id=117943621&fcfToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJmcmVlLXZpZXctaWQiOjM3MzA4MTUyOCwiaWF0IjoxNjg2Njg5NDE4LCJleHAiOjE2ODY3NzU4MTh9.8a7H46JNizgCVPT4DIH8DmiHc02tIuE2I-tm-qOoHUQ, accessed June 13, 2023.

R. Brent Keyser outgoing correspondence transcripts, information about Dunlora, Box 12, Folder 12, Keyser family papers, MS.0082, Special Collecctions, The Johns Hopkins University.

Rienzi, Greg, “It’s Keyser Quad, Please, Not the ‘Upper’ One,” The JHU Gazette, Vol 35 no 2, May 1, 2006, Johns Hopkins Gazette | May 1, 2006 (jh.edu), accessed June 13, 2023.

Samuel G. Wyman Obituary, The Baltimore Sun, March 7, 1883. Copies of news articles about Samuel Wyman (of Homewood) and Samuel G. Wyman (his nephew), 1883, Box 14, Folder 14, Keyser family papers, MS.0082, Special Collections, The Johns Hopkins University.

Verrell, Nancy. “Samuel Carr,” May 8, 2017. Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello. https://www.monticello.org/research-education/thomas-jefferson-encyclopedia/samuel-carr/, accessed June 13, 2023.

“William Keyser Stricken,” New York Times, June 4, 1904, https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1904/06/04/101392687.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0, accessed June 13, 2023.

U.S. Census Bureau. Ida Aquilla in household of Gaylord Lee Clark, Baltimore City, Maryland, United States, “United States Census, 1950,” database, FamilySearch, https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:6F9N-QZSV, accessed June 13, 2023.