Imagine being
descended from one of these!
I think they come from
Wisconsin, up north.
I've never met one, myself,
but I've heard they're tough!
Posted on 08/02/2005 10:20:13 AM PDT by hispanarepublicana
FRANKFORT, Ky. - (KRT) - When S.J. Arthur started tracing her lineage more than 20 years ago, a fellow researcher stammered as she noticed recurring family names.
Was she connected to a unique group of people known as Melungeons, the researcher timidly asked, afraid Arthur might slap her. The reference was once considered a racial slur.
"I could be," Arthur replied. "I just don't know yet."
This weekend Arthur was one of dozens of Melungeon descendants who gathered in Frankfort, Ky., to shed the stigma that plagued their ancestors and try to grasp their mysterious heritage.
The Melungeons have been described as a "tri-racial isolate," with a mixture of white, black and Native American ancestry. Others have claimed Portuguese and Turkish lineage.
Often, they had olive skin, black hair and blue eyes, setting them apart from Scotch-Irish settlers in their native Appalachia.
The group has been there for more than two centuries, enduring discrimination until recently.
There are thought to be 50,000 to 100,000 Melungeons living in the United States today, still concentrated in Appalachia.
Because Melungeons tried to escape their ethnicity and the prejudice attached to it, their descendants have faced difficulty learning about their roots.
"Melungeons have been extremely misunderstood through the years. Some people don't even think they exist as a group," said state historian Ron Bryant.
Wayne Winkler, president of the Melungeon Heritage Association, said this weekend's conference, "Melungeons: Fact or Fiction," will help people understand better where they come from.
"A big part of Melungeon history is folklore," Winkler said. "Nobody was ever listed on a census record as a Melungeon. There isn't a Melungeon DNA marker."
But, Winkler said, last names such as Mullins, Goins, Collins and Gibson were common to Melungeons. Anyone encountering a relative with one of those names from Appalachia probably shares Melungeon heritage.
Until the past 20 years or so, such a branch in the family tree might not have been welcomed.
Ill-behaved children in eastern Tennessee and western Virginia were told the Melungeons would come for them.
Winkler's uncles weren't allowed to attend public school. Instead, they were forced to attend a Presbyterian mission - the Vardy school - in Sneedville, Tenn., for Melungeon children. The school, which opened in 1902, closed in the 1970s.
Most researchers say the word Melungeon - once a pejorative - comes from the French "melange," meaning mixture. Using the epithet against someone was likely to start a fight.
"There's no pure ethnic group," Winkler said. "There was a lot more to it than genetics. It's how people looked at you."
After a successful 1970s play about Melungeons in Hancock County, Tenn. - the center of Melungeon heritage - they became more accepting of their ancestry.
"Nobody would even say it before, and suddenly people were proudly putting it out there," Winkler said.
The Internet brought greater opportunity for Melungeons to trace their genealogy. But records on them were still murky.
"If you find a census record that says someone is a free person of color, that doesn't necessarily mean they were black," the historian Bryant said.
"They really didn't break it down so nicely in the old days. Now, people are embracing subject matter that was taboo. They're looking at it in a historical context. Even if their heritage is mixed, it doesn't matter anyway."
Arthur, vice president of the Melungeon Heritage Association, brought this year's convention to her hometown of Frankfort. The association meets every two years in Wise, Va., and holds its off-year meetings around the South.
"We're looking to discuss some of the migration patterns, some of the history that explains why we're so diverse," she said.
Arthur found her Melungeon heritage through the Mullins line.
"My people are who they are, whatever the combination may be," Arthur said. "It's only recently become acceptable to have a mixed-race heritage. But my personal journey started long before."
Having the convention in Frankfort also provided access to state archives.
The Kentucky Historical Society keeps a file of research for thousands of last names and books with records from surrounding states. The history center holds three files on Melungeons, including letters from 1942 between the secretaries of state for Tennessee and Virginia trying to figure out who the Melungeons were.
Bobbie Foust of Calvert City, Ky., combed court records at the history center Friday in search of information on her great-great-grandparents.
Their children married wealthy European sisters. Foust has had no trouble tracing that side.
But her great-great-grandmother was a Gibson from Appalachia. Records on her are scant.
After she went to the Melungeons' "Second Union" in Wise, Va., five years ago, she learned why: Her forebears were Melungeon.
Johnnie Rhea from Sneedville looked through marriage records Friday. She had difficulty finding information before the first U.S. Census in 1790.
"They didn't leave a paper trail," she said. "A colored person in our area was low, but Melungeons were even lower. We weren't protected."
---
© 2005, Lexington Herald-Leader (Lexington, Ky.).
Visit the World Wide Web site of the Herald-Leader at http://www.kentucky.com
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.
Dang. I have the ridge at the base of my skull, and the wat you described with the teeth. This is a feature of Turkish ancestry??
"It was not uncommon for mixed race Virginians and other Southerners to migrate to the North to "pass" as white."
For the same reason, you find quite a few communities like Goinstown, NC clustered along the VA border. NC was poorly administered by the Lords Proprietors, particularly after Carolina was split into North and South, which made it something of a lawless "frontier" much later than any part of VA or SC. This made it a preferred destination for all manner of peoples who were outside of the pale in VA and other areas, due to religion primarily, but that was not the only reason. This comparative wildness was also why so many pirates called the Outer Banks area "home," aside from the roughness of the Atlantic offshore and the ever-changing nature of inlet and shoal there, which made pursuit nearly impossible by anyone who was not intimately familiar with the area.
The ridge is Turkish. The teeth thing, to my best understanding, is Melungeon, Asian or Indian.
"This is a feature of Turkish ancestry??"
And native American, and Asian. I wouldn't leap to conclusions, unless you're really into ancestry and have started coming across some of the surnames, and have tied them back to TN/NC/VA. They didn't leave much of a paper trail deliberately, these Melungeons, and they often moved quite frequently, which led to the pejorative association with Gypsies. Or, at least that has been my understanding, and I grew up in an area where a number of people who could be so described reside. It's probable that I have some Melungeon ancestry, but it's not an easy thing to prove, just as native American ancestry is not an easy thing to prove.
I live in SE TN, and all my family is from the area as well. I know the history of my paternal grandfather's family quite well, but I know virtually nothing earlier than around 1900 for the rest of the family. My paternal grandfather's family came here in the mid-1800's and were Scot/Irish. The rest of ther family, who knows?
"I know virtually nothing earlier than around 1900 for the rest of the family"
The census would be a good starting point, if you want to pursue it. You might also want to check into the Dawes Roll and the Guion Miller Roll for native ancestry. I "found" seven of my folks that way; their "applications" were rejected by the Cherokee, but it helped fill in the blanks nonetheless.
But, if you have any ancestors with surname "Hicks," all bets are off. Impossible. Many joke that they just sprung up in the woods in western NC and eastern TN like mushrooms, because there is absolutely no record of their having come from anywhere else prior, LOL.
Wouldn't it be amazing, to be able to know that your ancestors were among the first settlers (even before Jamestown) in America?
Yes. I'd start by doing 1 important thing first. Talk to the old people in your family before they die. If you start doing the research and have no one to whom to ask questions, you'll regret it.
ancestry.com has the 1880 census that you can use free, I think. (the rest of their site is subscription only). if not that site, then familysearch.org for census.
"Wouldn't it be amazing, to be able to know that your ancestors were among the first settlers (even before Jamestown) in America?"
I have some from "James Cittie." I have some Cherokee and Creek as well. So, this "earliest settler" business doesn't mean that much to me, even though it apparently has some kind of snob value to some people, usually WASP-ey or WASP-aspiring northerners. Everybody I knew growing up came from families that had been here so long that they didn't really "know" where their ancestors came from before America. I didn't know this was considered unusual until I went away to college.
I kind of know what you mean, my Spanish ancestors having been either some of Texas' older settlers with a little Mexican Indian thrown in for good measure. Mr. HR has quite a bit of Native American Indian in him too.
"Mr. HR has quite a bit of Native American Indian in him too."
Well, "howdy," then... from one "mestizo" American with a European surname to another, LOL. From completely different routes, languages and cultures, but a similar end-result. I've always loved imploding stereotypes, how about you?
I delight in it.
it isn't about how you spell so much as it about whom you impregnate, knowuttimean?
The cardiac drug Amiodarone can give the skin a blue color as a side effect. A chronic lack of oxygen can also lead to a blue appearance (cyanosis).
"it isn't about how you spell so much as it about whom you impregnate"
Your self-admitted, steady diet of "too much TV" prior to 1992 is showing.
Sort of like the Coneheads explaining their appearance by telling people that they are from France.
Random reply of the day nominee.
Imagine being
descended from one of these!
I think they come from
Wisconsin, up north.
I've never met one, myself,
but I've heard they're tough!
LOL. That's a muskellunge. Have another beer.
I've got the shovel teeth and the lump, but I can explain that by the strong possibility that one of my great grandmothers was Melungeon. She was born in the right part of Kentucky, had olive skin, and blue eyes. But my dh also has shovel teeth, and his ancestry is German & Swedish, with no historical links to the Appalachians. His Swedish half is pure, as they were recent immigrants to the US. But maybe there is a little mixture with American Indian the German side, given that they were here before the Revolutionary War so there would have been time for that.
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