George Keats (28 February 1797 – 24 December 1841) was an American businessman and civic leader in Louisville, Kentucky, as it emerged from a frontier entrepôt into a mercantile centre of the old northwest.

[6] Ten weeks later, the boys' mother Frances Jennings Keats married William Rawlings, abandoning her children, including younger siblings Tom and Fanny, to live with her parents, retired in Edmonton.

Their grandmother Alice Whalley Jennings relinquished custody to guardians, including Richard Abbey, in July 1810 and subsequently died before 19 December 1814.

During these years George was an important helpmate and influence on the poet, acting as an agent, dealing with John's publisher, and serving as a house manager for the three siblings, including their sickly brother Tom.

He claimed a portion of his inheritance, which he deemed inadequate to start a business in London, and laid plans to acquire farmland in southern Illinois, seeking an American fortune.

In June 1818 the couple departed London for Liverpool, accompanied by John Keats and his friend Charles Brown, who were setting forth on a Scottish walking tour.

After traveling to nearby Edwards County, Illinois, to see their prospective investment in Morris Birkbeck's community of Wanborough, George dropped the idea and instead spent the winter in John James Audubon's home in Henderson.

George ultimately settled all John's debts, but Charles Brown maligned him for twenty years, suggesting that he had deprived the poet of necessary funds.

Always working with partners, including Daniel Smith and John J. Jacob,[14] Keats culminated his building activities with the Louisville Hotel, built in 1835.

[14] The Keatses arrived in America as nominal Anglicans, but later joined the nascent Unitarian church, hosting its young leader James Freeman Clarke for a year in their household.

[16] Although the Keats circle of London friends were liberals who abhorred slavery, George rented slaves for his mill, due to the lack of available white labour.

Emma Speed met Oscar Wilde when he lectured in Louisville in 1882, and later sent him an autograph manuscript by her uncle John Keats of his poem 'Sonnet on Blue'.

It was strange to find, in those days, on the banks of the Ohio, one who had successfully devoted himself to active pursuits, and yet retained so fine a sensibility… The love of his brother, which continued through his life to be among the deepest affections of his soul, was a pledge of their reunion again in another world.

None could agree on who should prepare the legacy, until 1841 when George released his threatened injunction against Brown, who in turn handed his materials over to Richard Monckton Milnes, who never knew the poet.