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."
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© 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.
Here's a better surname list, I think: http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~mtnties/surname.html
I found one name, my Grandfather's mothers maiden name so maybe that is where he got his distinctive look. I have never seen a picture of her. That side of the family is very difficult to find and info on. Thanks again.
Thanks for the link.
The ones out of Louisiana are locally known as "Redbones."
I read the same in something I scanned earlier. That would be interesting indeed.
I read the same in something I scanned earlier. That would be interesting indeed.
My grandmother's people were Black Dutch, which probably had as much to do with having a lot of Native American blood as anything else. However, they were also mixed with French Huguenots (Maupin) who were driven out of France, settled temporarily in Holland, then went on to England, then to America from there to start an early Huguenot settlement in Virginia. The Dutch reference may have come from the stopover in Holland, but there wasn't any real reason for the Black Dutch or Black Irish reference except to explain dark Indian features which were looked down on back then.
Shovel teeth. The upper front four and the lower front four teeth are not flat, but are hollowed out with a ridge just above the gum line. Also, the ridge theme also applies to the back of the skull where it meets the neck. There is a ridge there which is so pronounced that it stops the fingers from being able to trace up the back of the head. This is the way my teeth and head are, but my characteristics come from Native American heritage from both sides of my family mixed with European. Before I read about this, I used to wonder why my teeth felt like that when I ran my tongue over them, but now I know more about my ancestors and understand. I don't know about Melungeons, mine were Black Dutch. Everyone is a melange, I guess, and fascinating.
Earlier today I discovered I had shovel teeth but had my hair up so I couldn't test for the ridge on the bakc of my head....I've got the ridge too it turns out. But, I'm pretty sure I'm not Melungeon. However, if Melungeon is a mix of Mediterranean and Indian, then my Spanish and Indian mix could come pretty close, especially if my Spanish includes Moorish as the Melungeons might have been Moors as well.
I think you are probably referring to a Finnish/Asian connection. It is theorized that the Finns are related, racially and linguistically, to the Hungarians, who in turn are related to the Koreans. Interestingly, the Korean word for their own nation and language is Han-gul or Han-guk. Think also of the "Huns."
Knowing Swedish, I can tell you that the Finnish language is nothing like the Scandinavian languages of Swedish/Norwegian/Danish. And based on the Korean I used to know, and having seen Finnish, I could believe they are related.
That's very interesting. My great grandfather spoke Finnish. I wonder why.
Of course, he also spoke Spanish, English, German and French, so I guess maybe he thought it made him well rounded. Still, I wonder when/where he'd have had occasion to use it in S. Texas.
doh! is he really blue? the guy I knew was just a shade greener. more of a lovely teal shade. still, could've been the same thing. who's this guy?
Stan Jones was some Libertarian who ran for office in Montana and who had taken some silver compound to get ready for Y2K. It made his skin blue.
I knew one such person too. We grew up together.
Did he have swollen dark-blueish fingertips? He had a severe heart condition.
In boxes of old photos, there is not a redhead or blonde that appears (until about the 1970s...but that is better living thru chemistry.) We are all fair skinned, with pale olive tones, and we do tan. We are not the traditional freckled, fair haired Irish. My 'Black Irish' bloodlines come from the west coast of Ireland and County Mayo.
My dad had read (somewhere) that certain sounds (phonetic) Irish surnames were actually closer in origin to spanish than to the native irish.
That's interesting. I'm familiar with the Maupin family; some of them married into my family early on. Black Dutch tends to mean that people have NA blood. It became a euphemism at a time when it was not politically and socially correct to have mixed blood. My mom owns a vacation trailer on land that is owned by a Maupin family. And I remember Maupin's store from my college days...
According to some Irish mythology, the Irish came from Spain. And before that, Egypt, I believe.
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