Heritage

 

I spent a couple of days last week in Pittsburgh, PA.  My family is from this area, possibly on both sides (history is murkier than the Monongahela for some of the genealogy).  One side is clear, and you can’t go too far in western PA without seeing the surname “McKee” (McKees Rocks, McKeesport, McKee Place) or Rutan (the little town of Rutan, which I have yet to visit).  I know that the Rutans, in particular, have been in this area since the 1700’s, (a grandfather from generations back, Samuel, is buried in the Upper Ten Mile Presbyterian Church Cemetary in Prosperity- he was a Revolutionary War veteran).

More recently, my own father was born in PA, in the 1920’s.  He has many memories of Pittsburgh, and had stayed at the same hotel I was in this week, the elegant William Penn.  Built in 1919, it has likely seen other relatives over the years…like my grandmother, Mary Elizabeth Rutan, when she would take the train north for shopping excursions at the old Kauffmann’s (now Macy’s, right up the street), or grandfather Harmon Samuel McKee, working one of his first jobs for the Heinz Company.

It’s good to be in a place sometimes where you can see your history all around you- it seems to me to more fully fill out a sense of identity.  Thanks, Pittsburgh.