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Ivan W. Keffer : Personal
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Physical description
- 46 cm of textual records
- 14 photographs : b&w ; 9 x 12 cm or smaller
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Name of creator
Biographical history
Ivan Wilbur Keffer was born March 21, 1890 in Berlin (now Kitchener), Ontario. He married Mary Louise Elligsen of Sebringville in 1917. Keffer began working for the F.W. Woolworth Co. in Hamilton, Ontario in 1912, after graduating from high school. He was named manager of a store in Stratford, Ontario in 1915, later working as a district superintendent and then buyer based in Toronto, Ontario. In 1927, the company opened the subsidiary F.W. Woolworth GmbH in Germany. The same year Keffer accepted a position to organize and develop the, moving with his wife and daughter Mary Jane to Berlin, Germany. He became managing director of the German company in 1933. The Keffers lived in Berlin until 1939 when they returned to Canada and settled in Toronto because of the political and economic tensions in Germany. Keffer continued to serve Woolworth’s as Canadian General Manager. In 1945, he was appointed executive vice president and treasurer of the company and the family moved to New York. Upon his retirement in 1953, the Keffers moved back to Toronto and lived in an apartment there as well as the house they built in Port Elgin. Keffer died January 7, 1965 and was buried in the family plot at Zion Evangelical Lutheran Cemetery in Vaughn, Ontario.
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Scope and content
Series consists of material created and accumulated by Ivan W. Keffer relating primarily to his personal life. Includes includes diaries, correspondence, notices and certificates, a passport and other personal/identification documents, clippings, ephemera, photographs, a scrapbook, and other material. The diaries, relating to Keffer's career as well as his personal life, cover the period during which he and his family lived in Germany and include entries that illustrate the escalation of political tensions and economic difficulties in Germany leading up to World War II and their impact on business in the country. Other material of note includes certificates and notices from the National Air Protection League (Reichsluftschutzbund).
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Some material is in German.