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Open the phone book and look up the
Kecks. In the Maynardville listings
alone there are more than 20, more
in Sharps Chapel and many more in
Claiborne County. The number with
Keck blood but without the name
would be most difficult to count.
The progenitor of
this vast line was a man named
Conrad Keck, a Revolutionary War
soldier, whose grave has gone
unmarked until recently. On Nov. 3,
descendents and others gathered to
finally place a marker for Conrad
and to honor one of this region’s
founding fathers.
Roger Edmondson,
registrar of the General Joseph
Martin chapter of the Sons of the
American Revolution, a descendent of
Conrad’s, started searching for
Conrad’s grave after he joined the
General Joseph Martin Chapter of the
Sons Honoring Conrad of the American
Revolution. He and fellow SAR member
Jim Edmondson searched for the Irwin
Cemetery in a rainstorm, where
legend had it that Conrad was buried
next to his wife, Mary Ann. They
found no marker.
Through
additional research and the
Union
County Cemeteries Association’s Web
site, they found
Carol Monroe Foggins, whose family
was instrumental in clearing and
tending the historic Irwin cemetery.
The SAR had to
provide documentation of Conrad’s
war record, so Todd Williams
searched the Pennsylvania archives
for Conrad’s muster sheets. “As far
as I can tell, he was there when he
was supposed to be and on time,”
said Edmondson. The son of
indentured servants, Conrad was born
in Allentown, Penn., and signed up
to serve in the Revolutionary War
with his father, Heinrich, in 1775.
After the war, Conrad lived in North
Carolina. He later moved to what was
then Claiborne County, near where
the Lakeview Boat Dock is today.
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