BIO: John KEAGY, Dauphin County, PA

Contributed for use in the USGenWeb Archives by Judy Bookwalter

Copyright 2008.  All rights reserved.
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http://www.usgwarchives.net/pa/dauphin/runk/runk-bios.htm
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Commemorative Biographical Encyclopedia of Dauphin County, 
Containing Sketches of Representative Citizens, and Many of the 
Early Scotch-Irish and German Settlers.  Chambersburg, Pa.: 
J. M. Runk & Company, 1896, page 355.
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  KEAGY, JOHN M., M.D., was born in Martic township, Lancaster county, 
Pa., about the year 1795.  He was of German descent on the maternal 
side, the name of his mother's family being Litzenberg.  He received a 
classical education, studied medicine and graduated in 1817.  In 1819 
he published a series of educational articles in the Baltimore 
Chronicle, which were reprinted at Harrisburg in 1824, in an octavo 
pamphlet of thirty-eight pages.  In 1827 Dr. Keagy became principal of 
the Harrisburg Academy, and during the same year published his 
"Pestallozian Primer," a work made up largely of the more modern 
object-lessons, but under the name of "Thinking Lessons, and Lessons in 
Generalization."  By this method, as soon as the child knows a vowel 
and a consonant, he is taught to spell and read the syllables which 
they form.  In the introduction the author advocated the teaching of a 
child to read words, "as if they were Chinese syllables," and without a 
previous knowledge of the letters, a practicable mode which avoids the 
absurdity of telling a child that see a tea (which should spell seat) 
spells cat.  He remained at Harrisburg about two years, when he went to 
Philadelphia to take charge of the Friends' High School.  Shortly 
before his death, which occurred at Philadelphia in the winter of 1836 
- 37, and is buried in Laurel Hill cemetery.  Dr. Keagy was elected 
professor of the languages in Dickinson College, but did not live to 
act.  Besides being a classical scholar, the Doctor knew Hebrew, German 
and French; he knew the principles of mechanics, and insisted that 
steam boilers should have more fire surface.  Had he been brought up as 
a machinist, he would have invented tubular boilers, having constructed 
a copper model composed partly of tubes.