There are confabulated legends of their origins, Turks or Portuguese or Moors or The Lost Colony. All that can be said is that they're an Appalachian tri-racial isolate group, there are several of those scattered along the state lines shared by NC, VA and TN.
“Researchers published an article in 2012 summarizing the DNA results. The female ancestors were shown to have had European DNA, while male ancestors had DNA from African or European haplogroups. Only one male had a Native American haplogroup.”