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Steven Rogers Keese (1801-1883) is my great-great-grandfather. A notebook filled with his original handwritten poems, mostly from 1881, recently came to my attention, thanks to La Von Keese. I have tried to reproduce the contents of that notebook here both in its original form and a transcription. The original was yellowed, and much of its writing is barely visible now. The original appears never to have been edited, just written down with occasional corrections and changes. Steven had strong feelings about how spelling should be reformed and those feelings are expressed in some of these poems and are reflected in all of the writings. In the transcriptions, I have taken the liberty of bringing the text up to current spelling norms to the best of my ability. The exceptions to this are the pieces on spelling reform for which I have included a transcription using the original spelling as well as a conventionally spelled version. Not only did Steven devise his own spelling rules, he also invented some special characters which are more of a problem to reproduce given the limits of current computerized fonts. In the pieces where I include a transcription with the original spelling, I have transcribed these special symbols as follows:
  1. symbol that looks like gamma and means "ou" becomes "@"
  2. symbol that looks like special script s and means "sh" becomes "$"
  3. symbol that looks like a script o with a shoulder and means oi becomes "%"
  4. symbol that looks like a script i with a shoulder and means long i becomes "#"
  5. "th"s are often written as one letter, an "h" that is crossed like a "t". I haven't substituted anything for this combination.
Other than the spelling changes, I have tried to adhere to the original as closely as possible, only making minor, hopefully obvious, changes to reflect the original intent. Generally I have not tried to deduce apparent missing words or make non-obvious corrections. In any case, the originals are shown alongside the transcriptions so that others can make their own interpretations in places where mine are questionable. The quality of the reproductions leaves much to be desired since the originals were very poor contrast, but they are hopefully legible.

I have also included two poems at the end of this collection that were not in the notebook but which were written at about the same time. They originally appeared in the "Keese Family History and Genealogy, 1690 to 1911" by W.T. Keese, Steven's son.

Tim Strand
San Jose, California
October 2002
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Introduction

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Glossary