Missouri Memories

Mary Paxton Keeley (1886-1986), Papers, 1830-1983

Mary Gentry Paxton Keeley was born on 2 June 1886 in Independence, Missouri, to John Gallatin Paxton and Mary Neil Gentry. She attended the University of Missouri and became the first female graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism in 1910. From 1910-1911 she worked for the Kansas City Post. She served from 1918-1919 with the Y.M.C.A. Canteen Service in France. Upon her return from Europe she married Edmund Burke Keeley and they settled in Virginia. Their only child, John Gallatin Paxton Keeley, was born in 1921. After her husband's death in 1928, Keeley returned to Missouri to work as a home economics extension agent and attended graduate school at the University of Missouri, where she completed a master's degree in journalism in 1928. The same year she published River Gold, a children's book. In 1929 she became the journalism instructor at Christian, now Columbia, College and the founder of The Microphone, the student newspaper. During her tenure she also taught creative writing and wrote and published several plays, many of which were performed locally. Although she retired from teaching in 1952, she continued to write articles for the Kansas City Star and to edit the Missouri Alumnus. She helped co-found the Columbia Art League in 1959 and was a member of Kappa Kappa Gamma, Theta Sigma Phi, and Kappa Tau Alpha. She was also the recipient of the Alumni Citation Award from the School of Journalism. Mary Paxton Keeley died on December 6, 1986, at 100 years of age.

Her 1937 diary is unique in that it documents, in great detail, the planning and construction of her home at 1111 Porter Street, Columbia, Missouri.