Dr. Keil is a Prussian, born in 1811; and was a man-milliner in Germany. He became a mystic, and he seems to have dealt also in magnetism, and used this as a curative agent for diseases. After living for some time in New York, he came to Pittsburgh, where he gave himself out as a physician, and showed, it is said, some knowledge of botany. He professed also to be the owner of a mysterious volume, written with human blood, and containing receipts for medicines which enabled him, as he professed, to cure various diseases. Presently he became a Methodist, and thereupon burned this book with certain awe-inspiring formalities. He seems to have been a fanatic in religious matters, for he soon left the Methodists to form a sect of his own; and it is related that he gathered a number of Germans about him, to whom he gave himself out as a being to be worshiped, and later as one of the two witnesses in the Book of Revelation; and in this capacity he gave public notice that on a certain day, after a fast of forty days, he would be slain in the presence of his followers. While he was thus engaged in forming a following for himself among the ignorant and simple-minded Germans, the rogue who called himself Count Leon came over and joined Rapp's colony at Economy; and when Leon, after quarreling with Rapp and removing to Phillipsburg, ran away from there to Louisiana, Keil managed to secure some of Leon's people as his adherents, and thereupon began to plan a communistic settlement, somewhat upon the plan of Rapp's, but with the celibate principle left out. In the year 1844, his followers, among whom were by good luck some of the seceders from Economy, began a settlement in accordance with these plans in Missouri. They were all either Germans or "Pennsylvania Dutch," and people of limited means. It is probable that Keil had nothing, for he appears for some years previously to have followed no regular business or profession. They removed to Bethel, a point forty-eight miles from Hannibal, in Missouri, and thirty-six miles from Quincy; and began in very humble style. Not all the colonists came out at once. He took with him at first two families and a number of young people. These broke ground in the new settlement, and others followed as they sold their property at home. Shelby County, Missouri, was then a new country. The colonists took up four sections, or two thousand five hundred and sixty acres of land, to which they added from time to time until they possessed four thousand acres. Upon a part of this estate they gradually established a distillery, grist-mill, sawmill, carding machinery, a woolen-mill, and all the mechanical trades needed by the farmers in their neighborhood, and thus they made a town. As soon as they were able they set up a general store, and a post-office was of course established by the government. Among their first buildings was a church; for Dr. Keil was their spiritual as well as temporal head.