This is not pieced together yet and I still have a lot more that I want to add

Before the widespread availability of computer simulation services and computer assisted design in general, it was necessary that professional engineers and land surveyors master the process of drafting. This now nearly extinct practice is patently artistic, requiring an array of different tools, all tailored to specific purposes, as well as a high degree of patience, dexterity, and a well-developed capacity for mental imaging. The tools required in order to draft successfully are organized into drafting sets, like the one pictured here. This set contains space for ten tools, one of which is missing: from the shape of its space, the missing tool seems to be a smaller version of the tool directly below it. The set is comprised of several sizes and varieties of compass, used to make circles and certain other shapes; as well as a few dividers, used primarily to segment lines. Also in the kit is a cool little metal container of Red Top Eversharp pencil leads. The case in which the tools are situated is in very poor condition. The outside is quite literally falling apart, and the folding flaps are in bad shape. Written on the inside of the case, next to the tools, is “H. KEATOR    KINGSTON N.Y.    1908.” As such, it is highly likely that this H. Keator first came to possess this set of tools in the year 1908. According to the 1940 census – to be elaborated on later –  he would have been twenty years old in 1908—the tools may have been a gift to him from a friend or family member upon his deciding to study engineering and seek certification. Inside of the case thee are two certification cards: one from 1926, the other from 1935………

This particular set of drafting tools belonged to a man named Harold E. Keator. He lived in Kingston, New York, and the 1940 census indicates that he was born around the year 1888. He had a wife, Adelaide, and a son, Harold E. Keator Jr. An attendance report from the 1912 annual meeting of the Society of Automobile Engineers at Madison Square Garden lists Keator’s name, followed by “Draftsman, Wyckoff, Church & Partridge, Kingston, N.Y.” Wyckoff, Church & Partridge was a New York City based company that took over the W. A. Wood Automobile Company in Kingston. Further research revealed much more about Keator. I was able to uncover a grayscale PDF of the Wednesday, March 23, 1960 issue of the Kingston Daily Freeman, which contains the obituary of one Harold E. Keator Sr. of Lake Katrine, NY. According to this obituary, Keator – or “Knobby,” as he was apparently called – died on 3/23/1960 after being ill for a short while. Further information about his family is included: his mother’s name was Carrie, his father’s, Edgar; and his son, Harold Jr., had two granddaughters, Christine and Kathleen. Most relevantly, the obituary confirms that this Harold E. Keator was, indeed, a professional engineer, and that he retired from the New York Central Railroad sometime during 1956—for me, this statement removes any doubt of this being the same Harold Keator who owned the drafting set. Keator was very active in his community: he was a member of the Kingston Kiwanis, several rod and gun clubs, as well as the Ulster County Chapter of the New York State Society of Professional Engineers.

As a professional engineer confirmed to have been employed with the New York Central Railroad, it is very likely that Keator worked on the Walkill Valley Railroad, which was purchased by New York Central in 1884. If this is the case, Keator and his drafting set would have operated in and around the Kingston area, including New Paltz. Though the Walkill Valley Railroad is now defunct, the Rail Trail now residing where the rails once did, the railroad had a massive effect on New Paltz, bringing characters from all walks of life from New York City and elsewhere, many of whom were likely drawn by the Mountain House.