ORIGINS & LOVE STORIES
“Meehan Strong” — a phrase first coined by a cousin — captures the enduring spirit of the descendants of Charles and Hester Freeman Meehan. There was strength in their love, strength in their children as they navigated a world divided by black and white, and strength in the memories that continue to live on, grounding and guiding future generations.
Join Charles, Hester, and their family as they journey through a world that was — and often still is — far from kind.
AN ENDURING LOVE
Charles was a child cast aside by unwed parents. More than a century after his birth, we learned of his German-Jewish heritage — a history hidden even from him. He was raised instead by an Irish woman and a Black man in the Elgin Settlement, a Canadian community founded as a haven for those escaping enslavement.
Hester was orphaned at eight.
Separated from her five siblings, she was taken in by Thomas and Margaret Walker Brown — close friends of her parents — who also lived in the Elgin Settlement.
Charles and Hester became friends, lifelong partners, parents, grandparents, and legacy builders. Their story is one of quiet strength, lasting love, and generations shaped by their resilience.
To learn more about their lives and their love, follow the link below.
BETWEEN WORLDS
Not every story lives in the light of certainty. Some unfold in the shadows between—between borders and bloodlines, memory and silence, seen and unseen. Between Worlds is where the Meehan story breathes: in crossings, in questions, in the quiet strength of those who learned to belong without a map.
Here, identity is layered, and home is a shifting place. Yet, love endures, spirit persists, and the legacy lives on—in the spaces between.
LENA'S MEMORIES
LENA'S MEMORIES
Memory lives in fragments — a voice at the kitchen table, a gesture passed down, a story told in the hush of evening. In Lena’s Memories, we gather what remains: the pieces that time could not take, carried in the heart of a woman who remembered not for herself alone, but for all of us.
These are recollections woven from love and labor, joy and sorrow, and the slow dance of days.
In Lena’s remembering, we find not just the past — we find ourselves.