J. M. Keating Born: 1830 Died: 1906

KEATING, John McLeod, journalist, was born in Ireland, in 1830. He learned the trade of printer, and after the failure of the revolution of 1848, in which he participated, he sought refuge in the United States and located in New York city, where he conducted an Irish-American newspaper until his removal to New Orleans on account of ill health. He was state printer at Baton Rouge for two years, conducted the printing plant of the Methodist publishing house at Nashville, and in 1858 became the managing editor of the Nashville News. In 1859 he became the commercial and city editor of the Memphis Bulletin. He joined the Confederate army, acting for a time as private secretary to Gen. Leonidas Polk.

In 1865 he established the Memphis Daily Commercial and later secured a half interest in the Appeal, of which he was managing editor for twenty-one years. During this time Memphis passed through three notable epidemics of yellow fever, during which every issue of the Appeal regularly appeared, even when the force was reduced to the managing editor and one boy. He also assisted in the philanthropic work made necessary by the plague, and was a leader in the subsequent sanitary work that, it was believed, secured Memphis against a recurrence of yellow fever in epidemic form.

In 1889 he became editor at the Commercial. Besides contributing many articles to magazine literature upon Southern problems, notably upon the condition and education of the negro, Southern sanitation, organized labor and woman suffrage, he is the author of: The Southern Question; Dirt, Disease and Degradation: A History of the Yellow Fever; History of the City of Memphis; a portion of The Military Annals of Tennessee, Confederate, besides other valuable works of a public character along lines of history, social science and sanitation. He was for many years a contributing member of the American Public Health association and was elected an honorary member of the Historical Society of Tennessee and of the Memphis Typographical Union.

J. M. Keating died in 1906, one of the great heroes in Memphis history.  His refusal to abandon the city during the most horrible yellow fever epidemics kept the city in the forefront of America's mind.  Without his pen, the epidemics would have been worse still and the city may have never rebuilt.  His writings on the Yellow Fever although now rare are a principal tool for genealogists in the Mid-South area.