A mineralogist and chemist associated with the University of Pennsylvania (1822-1828), William H. Keating was a central figure in the scientific community in Philadelphia during the 1820s and 1830s. Active in the American Philosophical Society and Academy of Natural Sciences, and a founding member of the Franklin Institute, Keating was official geologist on Stephen Harriman Long's expedition to the Great Lakes in 1823 and spent three years in the late 1820s surveying the mineral resources of Mexico. The William H. Keating notebooks include three cash books (daybooks of cash expenditures, 1830-1839) and a book containing surveys of Keating lands in Potter County, most undertaken by Silas McCarty for William's father John Keating (1801-1818). The surveys associated with John Keating are an interesting record of land investment and speculation in the northern tier of Pennsylvania. William Keating's meticulous cash books provide a detailed record of his domestic expenses, philanthropic involvements (donations to the Catholic Church, the Prison Society), his reading (newspapers and books are listed individually), socializing (theatre tickets, Assembly fees), and a variety of miscellaneous expenditures ranging from purchase of a lithograph of Dugald Stewart to a table lamp from C. Cornelius. His accounts also include lists of servant's wages and wages for washerwomen.