Early Life
Minor Cooper Keith was born in Brooklyn, New York, to the lumber merchant Minor Hubbell Keith, and his wife Emily Meiggs, sister of Henry Meiggs, a railroad businessman. After private schooling, the sixteen-year old adolescent was employed as a store clerk on the Broadway; months later, he quit clerking, and became a lumber surveyor. Having saved $3,000 in a year, Keith bought a cattle ranch located on a river island near the mouth of the Rio Grande, in southern Texas, which he administered until 1871, when he accepted a work invitation, from maternal uncle Henry Meiggs, to help manage the building of a railroad in Costa Rica, in Central America.
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