Louis Keller
Louis Keller was a curious little fellow; he had sandy hair, was short and stocky, walked with a limp, had a "gay nineties" mustache, and a squeaky, affected voice. He was troubled early in life with deafness - an affliction which seemed to ward off, at least from his point of view, some of the criticism he received for the sole distinction of his life - which was to found the Social Register. He was not a captain of industry, but was merely a young man who had inherited some money and a farm in Springfield, New Jersey. He was, however, intelligent, resourceful, energetic, and possessed fairly reliable entrepreneurial instincts.
His father, Charles M. Keller (1810-1874), was a prominent lawyer who drafted the United States Patent Law of 1836 and became the first Commissioner of Patents in the United States. Keller himself was born on February 27, 1857, the product of his father's second marriage to Heloise Antoinette de Chazournes (1823-1890). His mother was a member of a well-known French family in New York, the daughter of Felix de Chazournes, an affluent merchant, importer, and broker of some notoriety. Although born and raised in Manhattan, Keller spent the majority of the summers of his youth with his family at his father's "country cottage" and farm in Springfield.
There is no record of Keller's attendance at either a preparatory school or a university. He apparently needed an income but was not inclined to work a normal job. He tried a few things. He owned and operated a gun cartridge manufacturing plant and dabbled in gunsmithing. He also tried his hand at dairy farming on his father's farm in Springfield. None of these ventures were met with any particular success.
In spite of his modest inheritance and familial ties, Keller was not a member of New York’s social elite. They tended to be members of the established Protestant families and Keller was a second generation Catholic American. Although he was not a member of high society, he knew many who were, and socialized with them often. In 1885, Keller and a partner started a newspaper, Town Topics, devoted to society news and gossip. Two years later, they sold their paper. Keller then got the idea of creating a simple list of members of society, chosen only by him, called The Social Register. He sold it to those listed in it for $1.75 per copy and published winter and summer editions, showing the summer addresses in that season. As time went on, he expanded its coverage to eighteen cities. This venture was a great success and put Keller on a firm financial footing.
At some point, Keller began holding an annual picnic on his family farm in Springfield, hosting all of his friends and acquaintances who were listed in his Register. The picnic grew in popularity and became a “fixture” that was eagerly anticipated annually. The affair, complete with the guest list, was reported each year in the society pages.
Although he had never been so inclined to play the game himself, Keller noted that an increasing number of his acquaintances were learning to play golf and were joining clubs in eastern Long Island and elsewhere, and might be looking for a place closer to New York City in the fall and spring. Keller decided to start a golf club on his farm. A nine-hole golf course was constructed and Keller’s farmhouse was renovated to serve as a clubhouse. It was named the Baltusrol Golf Club, derived from a shortening of Baltus Roll who had farmed the land fifty years before.
Keller launched the club in April 1895 when he sent a letter to everyone he knew, including the subscribers to the Social Register, offering memberships with dues of $10 per year. Opening Day occurred on October 17, 1895.
Despite early successes, the club suffered from a large annual turnover in membership. To combat this problem, Keller instituted a number of improvements and maintained an interesting schedule of exhibitions and tournaments. Members of the club, nearly all residents of New York City, reached the grounds by an hour’s train ride and thereafter were conveyed to the club by horse and carriage over the local area's unimproved thoroughfares. Keller found transportation services to the club less than desirable. With the automobile in its early stages of development, Keller presumed that a railroad offered the most sound transportation option to the club.
At the hands of the Elmira syndicate, neither the New York & New Orange Railroad, the New Orange Four Junction Railroad, nor the Cross-Country Railroad, of which Keller was a part, succeeded in their pursuit of a railroad to Summit. With this fact in mind, Keller resolved to disregard them as partners and drum up his own support for the railroad project. Employing his resourcefulness, and capitalizing upon the long stated reason for a railroad to Summit, Keller induced the men pouring their dollars into the Kenilworth Realty Corporation (successor to the New Orange Industrial Association) to invest in his project. He convinced them that a railroad from Kenilworth to Summit would benefit the community greatly. On July 18, 1904, the Rahway Valley Railroad was formed, so named after the Rahway River which it planned to cross.
Keller instituted a number of improvements to the railroad during its construction, including the construction of depots, engine sheds, and a coal bunker in Kenilworth. When he declared the railroad completed as far as Springfield on May 25, 1905, Keller chartered a special private car to mark the occasion, inviting along personal guests, engineers in charge of the work, and officials of the railroad with a luncheon held at the clubhouse of the Baltusrol Golf Club. After the line was opened to Baltusrol on New Year's Day, 1906, Keller paid to macadamize Baltusrol Way between the club and the depot. The railroad was completed to Summit on July 26, 1906.
Construction costs had sunk the railroad deep into debt. On April 9, 1907, the railroad's Board of Directors voted to mortgage the entire property. The Chemung Canal Trust Co. of Elmira, New York issued the railroad a $400,000 mortgage. The bank, acting as trustee, thereafter issued four hundred, $1,000, 5% mortgage bonds on July 1, 1907. The majority of the bonds were purchased by Matthias H. Arnot and Ray Tompkins, who had been chief promoters of the New Orange Industrial Association. The bond issue included a call feature in which the bonds became redeemable by their holders any time after July 1, 1909, with the balance due on July 1, 1931. However, Keller refused to lose sovereignty over "his" railroad. With Elmirans owning the majority of the railroad's debt, Keller set up an operating organization called the Rahway Valley Co., Lessee on February 27, 1909 to lease and operate the property of the Rahway Valley Railroad Co. In this arrangement, Keller was on the receiving end and had the added financial support he needed.
The day-to-day operations of the railroad fell largely to the General Manager. Horatio F. Dankel (1904-1913), J. Spencer Caldwell (1913-1919), Robert H. England (1919-1920), and Roger A. Clark (1920-1932) were occupants of that office during Keller's lifetime. Keller himself, in his capacity as President and majority stockholder, kept tabs on the General Manager at Kenilworth and involved himself in matters which required his attention.
Keller sunk much of his personal fortune into the betterment of the railroad. Between 1914 and 1918, Keller personally acquired the lands necessary to construct a three-mile branch line between Union and Maplewood. Under the auspices of his wholly owned "Rahway Valley Line," Keller had the branch line constructed to tap properties ripe for industrial development in hopes of generating additional freight revenue for the railroad. In 1916, the railroad was in need of a steam locomotive but did not possess the funds to purchase one. Keller personally purchased locomotive No. 8 and leased it to the RV for $10 per day, excluding Sundays.
After World War I, the RV was nearing financial ruin as business had all but evaporated with the signing of the armistice. With no hope of repayment on their securities, the estates of Arnot and Tompkins looked to redeem their RV bond holdings and thereafter offer up the railroad for sale. To circumvent this, Keller purchased these bonds in December 1921.
Keller continued to sink his personal funds into the railroad, so that it could have some hope to continue operating. He had done the same with the Baltusrol Golf Club, holding the notes for several of the club's expansion and redevelopment. He was a private man. He was rarely photographed, never married nor had children, and the press hardly ever interviewed him. On the occasions when he was asked a question of the press, his response was invariably, nervously, “I will inquire of the Board.”
Louis Keller - publisher, golf club founder, and railroad owner - died in Manhattan on February 16, 1922 aged sixty-four.