THOSE AUDACIOUS MEEHANS

In this age of whitewashed textbooks, banned books, and politically sanctioned forgetting, telling the truth is a radical act. This site is part archive, part reckoning — a family history deeply rooted in the contested soil of American memory.

Our ancestors were not marginal figures in someone else’s story. They are the story.

Our matriarch, Hester, was of African descent and orphaned by the age of eight. Our patriarch, Charles, was of Jewish and German descent but found family in the care of Hannah Fee, an Irish foster mother, and Samuel Hayden, a Black man who escaped enslavement in Kentucky. Charles called Samuel his stepfather — a title not given lightly, and one that speaks to love, protection, and chosen kinship across racial lines in a fractured world.

Hester and Charles met as children in the Elgin Settlement near Chatham, Ontario — once called the “Black Man’s Paris” — a haven built by fugitives and freedom seekers who chose dignity over despair. Like so many others, their lives were shaped by the violent legacies of slavery, dispossession, and migration — but also by fierce devotion, self-determination, and love.

Our earliest recorded family story begins in 1821, with a fire on the water in Charleston Harbor. By 1843, our people were carving out space in the Queen’s Bush Settlement. In 1859, an Anderson cousin took a stand at Harpers Ferry beside John Brown. By 1885, we were planting roots as homesteaders in Nebraska — helping to build the longest-lasting African American rural settlement in the state’s history.

We do not tell these stories to romanticize the past. We tell them to remember — because forgetting is a luxury the descendants of the enslaved can never afford.

In a nation that too often erases or distorts the contributions of Black Americans, this site reclaims what was always ours: a voice, a place, a name. Our bloodlines are blended, our loyalties complex, our presence undeniable. We are not footnotes. We are foundations.

Whether you’ve come here out of curiosity, research, or accident — you are welcome. This is not just family history. It’s a map of America becoming.

This story is still unfolding. We invite you to read, reflect, and remember with us.