Introductions

Please allow me to introduce myself.

Before my court issued adoption papers were processed and the court order sealed the name assigned to me was “Baby Hansen.” By the end of the proceedings it was changed to “Paul Edmond Hansen.” Paul and Edmond remain a mystery, but Hansen was the name of my birth mother’s husband, Melvyn Everett Hansen. It’s now clear they were still married when I was conceived. However, the DNA test I took in 2020 confirms that he was not my father.

My official adoptive name is Robert Richardson Feigel. Robert appeared to have been my adoptive mother’s choice and the Richardson was both my adoptive parents’ fathers’ middle names and could be the last thing they ever agreed on.

That’s the name that appears on my official birth certificate but it’s only been recently that I’ve been able to discover that, like my official name, the date of my birth had been altered – possibly because I was either born at midnight or just moments after. So someone decided to flip a coin. I’ve also discovered that I wasn’t born in Deaconess Hospital in Evansville, Indiana as I’d been told, but in the “Christian Home” which, as far as I’ve been able to find, was a privately endowed institution for unwed mothers and no longer exists.

There are portions of my birth record that have been written over and changed. For example, the place where my father’s name is supposed to be.

Since a great deal of effort went into concealing the circumstances of my birth and I’ve since learned that my biological father was never informed of it I have come to accept that being of mixed race and my father not being my mother’s husband was not something that would make a mixed-race bastard an attractive prospect for adoption in 1941. Then I don’t know what part my birthmother’s relationship with her husband played in her decision to go out of her way to hide my birth. Perhaps he knew and that’s why they later divorced.

While they were still married he had enlisted in the Army Air Force in April 1942 (or just over 4 months after I was born) and for unexplained reasons had listed a boyhood friend as his next-of-kin rather than my birthmother. And he enlisted in Boise, Idaho, rather than Point Girardeau, MO, where he and my birthmother had lived.

It appears that I was conceived in Port Girardeau while my birthfather was investigating a suspicious arson claim for his law firm. Ironically, Cape Girardeau is also where his grandfather was born: Charles W. Kal-We Bluejacket, who was the last hereditary chief of the once thriving Shawnee tribe that occupied the Ohio Valley before being dispossessed. Coincidentally, Cape Girardeau is right across the Mississippi River from the Shawnee National Park in Indiana.

My birthfather was born in the Indian Territory in what would become the Blue Jacket reservation in Craig Country, Oklahoma and is buried there along with many members of my paternal family. He was of Scottish/Shawnee ancestry and a descendant of Jacobite Scots who escaped the highlands and landed in the “Carolina Borders” after the Battle of Culloden. On his Shawnee side he was a direct lineal descendant of the last paramount war chief of the Shawnee tribe, Waweyapiersenwaw Bluejacket. The Mackenzie and the Shawnee – two tribes that had been deprived of their homelands and cultures. Two tribes of warriors.

As none of my previous names reflect my true ancestry I can’t help but wonder what name I should choose for myself if I ever decide to change my adopted name.

Introductions © Robert R. Feigel 2022 – All Rights Reserved