Born in Princeton, New Jersey, Tom Keels grew up with a cemetery in his backyard: the Schenck-Covenhoven Burial Ground in Penns Neck. Besides making him the coolest kid in Miss Hauck's 3rd-grade class at the Penns Neck School, Tom's early exposure to this site instilled a fascination with the beauty of historic graveyards. His latest book, Philadelphia Graveyards and Cemeteries, illustrates this lifelong interest. 

Tom graduated from Princeton University in 1976 with a B.A. in European History, then attended the Radcliffe Publishing Procedures Course. After spending a decade in New York City in publishing and marketing, Tom moved to Philadelphia in 1988. Today, he is in charge of management reporting for Reimbursement Technologies Inc. in Conshohocken. 

In 2002, Tom co-authored Chestnut Hill, a pictorial record of the historic Philadelphia neighborhood, with Elizabeth Farmer Jarvis. Released by Arcadia Publishing in September 2002, Chestnut Hill was Arcadia's fifth best-selling title among its hundreds of releases by year's end. Tom is also the author of Old Blood, a vampire thriller set in Philadelphia over the past 300 years. 

Since 1997, Tom has been a tour guide at Laurel Hill Cemetery, Philadelphia's premier Victorian cemetery. Tom also writes the scripts for actors taking the roles of Laurel Hill's residents in its annual Halloween tours, reviving such illustrious Philadelphians as Frank Furness, Sarah Josepha Hale, and Isaac Hull. 

Tom has lectured to numerous groups on such topics as "Laurel Hill Cemetery and the Victorian Way of Death," "Andorra Nurseries: From Private Estate to Public Preserve," and "Historic Chestnut Hill." His articles on local and regional history have appeared in the Chestnut Hill Local, Main Line Times, Springfield Sun, and other newspapers. His most recent article, "The Wizard in the White City: Henry B. Auchy's Entertainment Empire", appears in the Autumn 2005 Bulletin of the Historical Society of Montgomery County. He is currently at work on Forgotten Philadelphia: Lost Architecture of the Quaker City, a social history of Philadelphia's lost landmarks, which will be published by Temple University Press in autumn 2007. 

Tom serves on the Board of Directors of the Friends of Laurel Hill Cemetery. He is a member of the Athenaeum of Philadelphia, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, and the Chestnut Hill Historical Society. 

Contact Tom Keels at tom_keels@phillygraves.com.

© Copyright, 2003. Thomas H. Keels