Begin at the Beginning

I was born at Fitzsimmons Army Hospital in Denver Colorado in 1955. My parents, James and Eleanor McKeeman, had arrived there a few months before my birth from Vienna, Austria where my father had been stationed with his Army Counter Intelligence Corps unit.

My father was born in Geneva, Nebraska and my mother in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Although Colorado is one of those places where people put great stock in being a "Native", and I am technically a native of Colorado because I was, after all, born there, I am not sure that I really count as a daughter of the Centennial State.

Upon landing in a part of rural Vermont where the difference between being a native or being flatlander is measured in multiple generations, not simply an accident of natal geography, I learned the admonition: "Just because your cat has kittens in the oven do you call 'em muffins?" Point taken.

So the fact that my mother had this kitten in Colorado does not, in fact, make me much of a Colorado native, in exactly the same way that my two sisters, who were both born while my dad was stationed in Vienna, certainly have never been considered Austrian.

Indeed, when discussing nativity and the places we come from, my father's folks had been rolling stones since around 1787 when our Massachusetts forebears struck out for the old Northwest Territories and settled the town of Marietta in what would eventually to become the state of Ohio. For the next 5 generations they moved from Ohio to Illinois to Nebraska, Kansas and Indian Territory (Oklahoma) and then back to Nebraska where my dad was born. Where are you from, stranger?

My mother's paternal family, the Heydricks, on the other hand, left Silesia in 1734 settled in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania; one Heydrick, my mother's grandfather, William W., moved a little bit nearer to the Delaware River which put him into the Bridesburg area of Philadelphia, and there he stayed. My mother, very clearly, is a native of Philadelphia. One of her sisters stayed in Philly after marrying and so I have three cousins who are all Philadelphia natives as well. The other sister and her husband struck out like so many vets after WWII and resettled in the land of milk and honey--Orange County, California. My four California cousins are first generation Californians. I don't know whether they can appropriately call themselves natives or not--California having been the destination of choice for fortune seekers since 1849 isn't everyone there an immigrant?

Naturally all of this talk of who is and who isn't a native begs the largest question of all: none of us are true North American natives. We're all usurpers, steppers on toes of those who rightfully claim native status. My ancestors all played their part in extirpating the native peoples and animals who got in their way. My fifth great-grandfather, John McCaddon, was part of some attempts in the 1780s to "chastise" the quarrelsome natives along the Ohio River in the vicinity of what is now Cincinnati. My great-grandfather, D.L. Aikins, was proud of the dogs that he used to hunt prairie wolves in Kansas and Oklahoma in the 1880s and 1890s. My puritan ancestors who joined John Winthrop in establishing the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the 1630s surely contributed to wiping out the native peoples in the infamous King Philip's War of 1675-1678.

I plan to tell what I've learned about all of these people--my ancestors who all played a part in shaping this great country. I hope you'll come along and maybe you'll be able to fill in a missing piece of the puzzle here and there.