author
Hervey Keyes
A 19th-century New York writer, farmer, and local public figure, he is remembered for The Forest King, a frontier tale set in the Mohawk Valley. His life stayed close to the land and politics of Otsego County, which gives his fiction a strong sense of place.
1 Audiobook
The Forest King Wild Hunter of the Adaca
by Hervey Keyes
About the author
Born in Laurens, Otsego County, New York, Hervey Keyes was the son of Harvey and Margaret Keyes. A county history says he was educated in local schools, spent his early years working on the family farm, and later remained active in agriculture in his home region.
That same local source describes him as a committed Democrat who served as a justice of the peace and held other town offices. Those details suggest a writer deeply rooted in community life rather than a full-time literary career.
Keyes is best known for The Forest King; or, The Wild Hunter of the Adaca, a novel first published in 1878 and set in the seventeenth century in the Mohawk Valley. The surviving record available here is thin, but his book and the county biography together show an author whose work grew out of upstate New York history and landscape.