History of the Audacious Meehans
Family & Friends: Stories of Black Family and Community Migrations Between the U.S. and Canada
The scope of Those Audacious Meehans is expanding to tell the intertwined stories of Black families and communities who moved between the United States and Canada — sometimes by choice, sometimes by necessity — forming bonds that stretched across generations and geographies. Within these pages, you will find letters, photographs, community profiles, family histories, and reflections that bear witness to those who walked, sailed, homesteaded, and hoped together. The story is as large as the country that birthed it, and it is presented here through the lens of the Meehan family and the many connected people and places their lives touched.
The DeWitty Database has been upgraded on this site, but no new material will be added to Those Audacious Meehans, as my focus has shifted to the expanded site: A Northern Diaspora.
Those Audacious Meehans will remain online as an enduring part of this journey. I hope you'll continue to visit, and when A Northern Diaspora opens its doors, I hope you'll join me there as well. Updates will be posted here as the new site takes shape.
DEDICATION
This site is dedicated to the families who walked side by side.
They journeyed together — from the Carolinas, the Mid-Atlantic region, and from the South — seeking refuge in Canada’s Queen’s Bush, building lives in Chatham and its surrounding areas, and later forging new communities in Michigan and in the unforgiving plains of Nebraska.
They crossed borders, carried children, and bore witness to one another’s joy and grief — not as isolated pioneers, but as a cloud of witnesses bound by kinship, faith, and necessity. Whether by foot, wagon, ship, or prayer, they moved as one — sometimes in body, always in spirit.
The people of DeWitty, Nebraska — gathered here in fellowship at a community picnic — represent the strength of many who endured by enduring together. Their names may differ, but their legacy is shared. In every land they settled, they left behind more than footprints — they left community.
We honor them here.
African Proverb
“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”
ABOUT ME
I am Catherine Meehan Blount, the youngest grandchild of Charles and Hester Freeman Meehan.
I began this work to honor my family, but it has grown into a calling to preserve the stories of a much larger community. Guided by faith and by the conviction of Psalm 71:17–18, I see this season of my life as an assignment: to gather what might otherwise be lost, to speak of God’s faithfulness, and to pass on the strength of those who came before us.
I am a genealogist by practice, not by formal training, shaped by years of research into families whose histories stretch across the United States and Canada. My work draws together documents, letters, photographs, artifacts, migration patterns, DNA research, and oral histories to rebuild narratives often overlooked or misunderstood in mainstream accounts. These stories reveal a people who endured, migrated, resisted, intermarried, prayed, built, and hoped together — a people formed in the Americas, whose legacy deserves to be remembered.
This website is part archive, part meditation, and part offering. It reflects the questions I have asked, the trails I have followed, and the faith that steadies me as I continue to learn. Though much of this work began with the Meehan family, it extends to the broader communities intertwined with their lives — communities connected through kinship, circumstance, geography, and shared history.
I add new material as research continues and as God grants clarity and strength. My hope is that this site serves not only my own family, but anyone seeking to understand the many ways our ancestors shaped the world we inherited.
Thank you for visiting, and for returning as this work unfolds.
Catherine Meehan Blount
Site Creator and Administrator