FATHER KELLER

In the early stages of World War I, the Protestant town of Slaton perceived a traitor in its midst. The new local Catholic priest, Father Joseph M. Keller, had been born in Aachen, Germany.

It was rumored that Germans or folks of German descent who were living in America were spying for the Kaiser, and Father Keller fit the rumor-mill profile to a T. He had immigrated to America in 1916 and was ordained in Kenrick, Missouri, before accepting the charge of the Missionary Parish of Slaton in early 1917. Not long after the United States joined the war, the local newspaper, the Slatonite, began condemning all Germans as “Huns” and “barbarians,” and Father Keller took offense. He initially appealed to the Slatonite editor’s sense of reason, but the editor was unimpressed, and their disagreement was heated. To make matters worse, as World War I wore on, Father Keller was disinclined to denounce his homeland and reportedly had to be persuaded to take down a photo of Kaiser Wilhelm in his office.

Having accepted the Catholic mission in Slaton because he was intrigued by the idea of the American West, Father Keller soon found himself a victim of his own romantic notions. The rural community of Slaton was provincial. The Ku Klux Klan was well represented at the local and county levels of law enforcement, and the citizens of Slaton viewed the new German priest and the growing Catholic presence in the area with suspicion and dismay.

John Meints, a German American farmer living in Luverne, Minnesota, was—like Father Joseph Keller—whipped and then tarred and feathered because his neighbors felt he wasn’t loyal enough to the American cause in World War I. Meints reported the incident to the local authorities and sued the thirty-two men involved in the assault for $100,000. The subsequent trial produced over one thousand pages of testimony, and the U.S. District Court jury sided with Meints’s assailants, concluding that Meints was disloyal. Meints appealed the ruling in 1922 and settled out of court for $6,000. Courtesy of the United States National Archives and Records Administration.

By 1918, Father Keller was so unpopular that some of his own parishioners petitioned Bishop Joseph P. Lynch (of the Diocese of Dallas) to replace him, but Bishop Lynch refused and ordered the petitioners to afford Keller the confidence and respect he deserved as their priest.

A whisper campaign ensued, indicating that Father Keller was not only a spy but also a lecher and an adulterer and was infected with syphilis. These accusations appeared to be groundless, but the gossip of his improprieties continued. Bishop Lynch eventually investigated Father Keller but found no evidence of serious personal or professional shortcomings.

In 1919, after the war ended, Father Keller traveled to Abilene to procure U.S. citizenship; two citizens of Slaton followed him in an attempt to testify against him at his citizenship hearing.

In early 1920, the Missionary Parish of Slaton began construction on a new, larger church and had plans to establish a parochial school later in the year. Many Protestant citizens of Slaton felt threatened by the swelling Catholic populations and blamed Father Keller.

In early 1922, after the new church was up and the parochial school was off and running, a new set of rumors circulated, this time alleging that Father Keller had broken the seal of confession. He continued administering his parish duties undeterred, even successfully petitioning for a new Catholic mission in nearby Littlefield.

Back view of John Meints after his tar and feathering. Courtesy of the United States National Archives and Records Administration.

On March 4, 1922, at around 8:45 p.m., Father Keller heard a loud knock at his door. When he answered the knock, six gunmen in masks seized him and dragged him from his doorway to a waiting car. The gunmen tied his hands, stuffed him into the back seat of the vehicle and then sped out of town heading north.

Once they were about a mile outside Slaton, Father Keller’s kidnappers parked their car in the cover of darkness and presented him to a twenty- to thirty-man gathering of some of his most ardent critics and detractors. They pulled off his robe and tore away his pajama bottoms. They restrained him, lectured him and viciously whipped him, subjecting him to approximately twenty lashes. Then they dumped searing tar over his head and shoulders, burning his flesh and lash wounds, and tore open a pillow to apply a coat of feathers. Father Keller was instructed to leave Slaton within twenty-four hours and then left lying alone in the field, trembling beneath a coat of drying tar.

Father Keller struggled to his feet and painfully trudged toward Slaton. He limped to the office of a local doctor named Tucker wearing only one slipper. Dr. Tucker spent most of the night scrubbing away the tar and feathers from Father Keller’s skin with kerosene, and the next morning, Father Keller left on an early train.

The March 7, 1922 edition of the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal insisted that the Lubbock County citizens responsible for the assault of Father Keller had done little more than their duty and were justified because he was guilty of adultery, misogyny and “other things unbecoming to a citizen of America.” In a later account published in a memoir entitled Pioneer Preacher of the Plains, longtime preacher John Pettigrew Hardesty relegated Father Keller’s tar and feathering to one of the “exciting times during those days” and suggested that if the group responsible hadn’t tarred and feathered Father Keller, any number of other parties would have.

After leaving Slaton, Father Keller spent most of the next year recovering at the Sisters of Precious Blood Convent just outside St. Louis, Missouri. When the trauma and agony of the Slaton assault were far enough removed from his mind, he joined the Milwaukee, Wisconsin Diocese. For the next several years, he served as assistant pastor at St. Joseph’s Church in Milwaukee, assistant pastor at St. Peter’s Church in Beaver Dam, pastor of St. Francis Church in Brighton and pastor of St. Boniface Church in Goldendale (where he built a rectory).

On July 1, 1933, Father Keller became the pastor of St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Milwaukee and remained there until his death at the age of fifty-eight on December 18, 1939. He had been ill for most of 1938 and had entered St. Joseph’s Hospital on October 2.

The money from Father Keller’s life insurance policy went to the Catholic Diocese of Amarillo to serve the needs of his original parish in Slaton, and on August 20, 1972, the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal noted that the Sacred Heart Catholic Church of Littlefield celebrated its fiftieth anniversary with a reading of Father Joseph M. Keller’s original petition letter.