Chapter One: Introduction

Much of this little essay consists of a synthesis of recent work carried out by various Keck researchers, especially the late Don Slivka. Don edited J.A. Keck's 1901 history of the Keck family and in the process gathered together a number of short studies from various Keck family genealogists, namely, Hilary Rauch, Mike Keck, Cheryl Tarbet, Mike Cavanaugh, Dan Stevenson, and Dolly Rardain. He combined these studies into a series of appendices to his history. These appendices provide some of the most up-to-date information on the origins of Henrich Keck (Geck) and his posterity. I have not presented the appendices verbatum, but I have drawn on them extensively in this summary of my particular Keck line.

I trace one branch of the Keck family as it moved from Pennsylvania to North Carolina and then on into Tennessee and Arkansas. From Arkansas this branch of the family scattered: mostly to the Northwest except for a few renegades in Arizona, Utah, and elsewhere in the West.

I rely on both family history and government documents, especially BLM land grant documents and censuses. I was also kindly allowed to look over the research of Renae Smith, a Keck descendant who lives in Madison county, AR.

I have verified as many of the dates as possible, but many of them are from family histories and have not or cannot be verified. When I have a source for a date, I provide it in the text. If no source is given, that means it is a traditional date.

To keep the book to a manageable and reasonable length, I have omitted most of the maternal lines, but in the appendices I have included some interesting information on some of the more interesting maternal lines. For example, Appendix G is a study of Isaac Keen; I discuss some of the ancestors of Salinda Francis Tucker in Appendix E and Appendix F. The rest of the appendices consist of three family histories, including Don's edition of the J. A. Keck 1901 History, and a brief comment on some probable and fairly unremarkable Royal connections.

This history takes its present form for two reasons. Concerning the physical layout, originally the project was written in TeX, but soon thereafter it became an exercise to learn HTML and XHTML. When I decided to convert it into a web-based format, I coded the document manually into HTML first using Emacs, then the Bluefish and Quanta Plus HTML editors. Appendix A was originally in RTF (Rich Text Format), which I had to convert to Tex (using the Lyx editor) and then to HTML using the Lyx2html app. I then had to clean it up manually using Quanta. I did much of the editing in Emacs, but most of the final editing has been done with the Bluefish editor.

With regards to the content, my intended audience is my own immediate family, whose genealogical knowledge I am aware of, so I tailored the essay with them in mind. I imagine there are errors and omissions and many researchers may not agree with my interpretations. If any readers have issues or suggestions or improvements or simply greater knowledge, please e-mail me and we can talk.

One final introductory note: the surname Keck was originally spelled Geck. Henrich himself clearly spelled it that way when he signed the Oaths of Abjuration and Allegience upon his arrival in Philadelphia on 17 October, 1732.¹ Sometime after his arrival in Pennsylvania Henrich changed the spelling of his name from Geck to Keck. On his will, dated 8 May 1786, Henrich clearly signed his name as Henrich Keck.²

The spelling of the name "Keck" did not stabilize into the form we know now until after about 1825. Besides Geck, I have found the name spelled phonetically in the following ways: Kech, Keack, Kegg, Caick, Cake, Cagg, Calk, and Kek. From the time of Andrew Keck (son of Frederick Conrad Keck), the name is consistently spelled Keck.