“Take some more tea,” the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly.
“I’ve had nothing yet,” Alice replied in an offended tone: “so I can’t take more.”
“You mean you can’t take less,” said the Hatter: “It’s very easy to take more than nothing.”
Discussing the history of Keevil, the Hatter is like the rabbit hole in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. It can lead to a dizzying array of paths.
The craving of upper class French and English gentlemen for stylish and water resistant beaver felt hats accelerated the settling of the American Northwest. Indeed, it was most likely the impetus for its settlement in the first place. Montreal, Detroit and St. Louis owe their very existence to the fur trade.
The French explored eastern Canada in the early 1500s, trapping beaver, ermine, and mink for the aristocracy back home. Quebec was founded as a trapping and trading center, and fed a boom in pelts for beaver hats. By the early 1600s, the English joined in, developing the trade along the Atlantic coast.
As the market for pelts, fur and felt grew insatiable during the 17th and 18th centuries, the two rival nations butted heads west of the Allegheny Mountains; one cause of the French and Indian War. As a result, the victorious English claimed almost all French holdings in the new world.
In 1764, a party of New Orleanians led by Pierre Laclede journeyed up the Mississippi River. They were set on exploiting access to fur trading with the Osage nation west along the Missouri River. Along with his 14 year old ward, Auguste Chouteau, they founded what is now St. Louis.
The fur trade sets up shop in St. Louis
When Laclede died, Chouteau took over the trading operation, and widely expanded it. By 1794, he had monopolized the fur trade with the Osage. When he died in 1829, Chouteau was easily the wealthiest man in St. Louis.
Following the sale of the Louisiana territory from France to the young United States in 1803, Thomas Jefferson assigned Lewis and Clark to explore and survey the new acquisition.
They were partially funded by Manuel Lisa, a wealthy fur trader in St. Louis, in return for logging the most attractive sites for trapping as they went. This was Lisa’s best hope of competing with Chouteau by, in effect, leap-frogging him.
On the evening of Lewis and Clark’s return to St Louis in 1806, they shared a sumptuous meal and more than a couple drinks with Lisa, who gleaned as much fresh detail as he could. Wasting no time, he outfitted an expedition that set off less than a year later, to trap in the new lands. He also created the Missouri Fur Company with Chouteau’s son Pierre, William Clark, Pierre Menard and others.
Above is a 1930s photo of the original Old Rock House, built by Manuel Lisa in 1818. It was a Missouri Fur Company warehouse, and along with the Old Cathedral, one of only two structures around the riverfront to have survived the great fire of 1849. Demolished for the Gateway Arch project in 1959, its facade was recently reassembled in the Arch museum.
An era of exploration, trapping, and trading constituted the earliest development of the West, leading to conflicts with indigenous tribes and foreign interests on the Pacific coast. The rivers were the roads in those days, and the beaver inhabited the rivers.
After every stream was explored and beaver by the tens of millions had been trapped, skinned and shipped east, the supply became exhausted. Luckily for the beaver, fashion was also changing, as silk became seen as a more refined choice for top hats. By 1870, more beaver was used in perfume production than in providing felt for hats.
A brief word about the madness of hatters
The process of making felt from a pelt is called carroting; from the interaction of chemicals that turns the pelt orange. Fur is degraded to felt, which is then matted and molded into a hat. A hatter was an artisan who could turn felt into durable and attractive headwear. The expression “mad as a hatter” also has some truth in it.
Lewis Carroll popularized the Mad Hatter in his 1865 fantasy, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, but the term “mad as a hatter” preceded the book by a good 35 years. Though unrealized at the time, the use of mercury nitrate in felt production caused mercury fumes to be inhaled, moving through lungs to bloodstream to brain, where it lodged and accumulated over time.
Hatters tended to develop some troubling symptoms: depression, irritability, hallucinations, and characteristic tremors. These were common enough in the late 1800’s, that in Danbury Connecticut, capitol of the American hat industry, they were referred to as the “Danbury shakes.”
This may help explain a simple and otherwise unremarkable article from the Philadelphia Public Ledger of January 11 1840:
Relatives Alfred, in Pittsburgh and William in Balitmore were also hatters. William moved to St. Louis around 1849. In the 1850s and 1860s, his store, Keevil the Hatter shared space at Corinthian Hall, a respected performance venue about where Busch Stadium is today.
Can’t miss Keevil’s The Hatter
The store was conspicuous by the presence of a large men’s top hat mounted atop the building.
The earliest pictorial map of St Louis still in circulation, that by James Palmatary in 1858, clearly shows the distinctive look of Keevil the Hatter.
By the 1870s, Keevil’s had moved to 4th Street at Broadway, where the downtown Hilton is today. Below is a reminder, from 1876, of how the streets downtown were still dirt, and gaslights few and far between. A nice top hat gave the place a little style.
No detail missed the scrutiny of Camile Dry, and this, like so much of 1875 St. Louis is rendered in his Pictorial St. Louis panoramic map.
William Keevil came from a line of whimsical hatters, and his ads could go over the top, even in a time of routine promotional overstatement. This, from the Globe-Democrat of October 3 1875:
The Globe and Democrat newspapers had merged that year, forming “the greatest newspaper west of the Alleghenies.” A neat, if unintentional reference to the old beaver wars, with a friendly hatter right across the street on Broadway. The arrow points to the new Globe Democrat offices.
For decades, the Keevils advertised with verse, not unlike the ads for Burma Shave along roadways in the 20th century.
Here, a short sample from 1847, when the Keevil hat business was located in Pittsburgh:
The jealous may joke, and may rail at his name,
But the faster he’ll rise on the record of fame
Three cheers for friend Keevil, the Hatter!
For the people are not to their interest blind,
They will buy where the cheapest and best they can find,
And these qualities both in his Hats are combined;
Success to friend Keevil, the Hatter!
Do you know why he’s able to undersell all?
He makes them himself, and his profits are small,
Three cheers for friend Keevil, the Hatter!
Not two or three profits his Hats ever bear;
A hat that is sold at four dollars elsewhere,
He will sell for three fifty, and that’s very fair;
Success to friend Keevil, the Hatter!
They may rail at this prices, and ridicule more,
But they’ll find that the people will flock to his store,
Three cheers for friend Keevil, the Hatter!
His fame is fast spreading the country around,
And his profits, though small, are becoming profound,
And his Hats are in currency solid and sound;
Then buy of A. Keevil, the Hatter
By 1860, the poetry had become a little more succinct. From the Missouri Daily Republican:
My chiefest aid amongst bright eye’d belles,
Where polish ever wins and dwells,
Thy gift each other gift excels:
“KEEVIL” – My Hatter!
And still the same in hall or street,
The eyes of all I shun or greet,
In concert on my chapeau meet:
“KEEVIL” – My Hatter!
Then thanks be thine! Thy praise is told;
So hear a tale of worth unfold!
Thy Hats I prize far more than gold:
“KEEVIL” – My Hatter!
A tip of the cap to the cap itself
Up until the early 1960s, men’ hats were considered a necessary or even defining accessory. Legend has it that an often hatless JFK single-handedly cratered the market for hats. Regardless, they gave a classy appearance, and still are a major upgrade from the ubitquitous ball caps, occasionally worn backwards, maybe as a reaction to upper class pretension. Still, a well-worn fedora brings some added depth to the wearer. There might not be a genre like film noir without the telltale fedora.
If there’s more to tell, I’ll keep it under my hat for now.
Thanks to research sources, including
Alices Adventures in Wonderland; Lewis Carroll; Illustrations by John Tenniel; 1865
The Montana Trappers Association @ montanatrappers.org
How Stuff Works; April 24, 2020; Kristen Hall-Geisler
Before Big Box Stores, St. Louis Had a Giant Hat Store; St Louis Post-Dispatch, July 12 2015; Joe Holleman
Missouri Historical Society for Keevil Photographs
Historic Missourians; State Historical Society of Missouri
Business Insider of August 22, 2018; David Anderson
history.com; August 22,2018; Elizabeth Nix
Dana Andrews photo from Where The Sidewalk Ends; 20th Century Fox, 1950
Greetings Author Mike
I’m Keevil Family History Mike who just stumbled across your article.
I inherited the family paperwork (yes, it was paper then) from my grandfather (Sidney Gibson Keevil) at his death in 1980. I’ve taken the responsibility of moving to electronic storage of the data and researching what I can from my home.
If you can contact me and pass along anything on the family that you can think of, I would be delighted.
Michael Keevil
Hi, Mike; Congratulations on becoming your family’s official historian. Glad you stumbled this way. I wrote what I could easily find on the hat store, so probably can’t enlighten you on that. Good luck on your curation!