Posted on 02/12/2005 9:52:39 AM PST by Engraved-on-His-hands
For more than 200 hundred years the mysterious origins of the Melungeons has mystified many who were searching for facts. Recent research compiled by the Melungeon Research Committee (MRS) reveals the most probable theory thus far.
(Excerpt) Read more at zwire.com ...
Mulignon – (Southern Italian dialect) – a black person, sometimes used in the same context as ..., kinda close, my step father blames the eggplant corruption on the Turks in Southern Italy, I am a Yankee we would have corrupted worst than that.
I'm sure more information will be available in the future with more DNA testing. This is very interesting.
Welcome to Free Republic. I'm not sure but what I may be part Melungeon. My ancestors were all around East Tenn. and my grandfather was half Creek Indian. I don't know what the rest of him was, LOL.
The conclusions verified the Mediterranean origins of the Melugeons. Specific regions mentioned as having populations with genetic markers consistent with the Melungeons included: Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Iraq, Turkey, Cyprus, Malta, Canary Islands, extreme southern Italy, the Galician mountain region of Spain and Portugal, and certain South American Indians.
Abstract: Tennessee Anthropologist, published by the Tennessee Anthropological Association MELUNGEONS: COMPARISON OF GENE FREQUENCY DISTRIBUTIONS TO THOSE OF WORLDWIDE POPULATIONS. James L. Guthrie. XV(1):13-22. 1990.
"Worldwide gene frequency distributions in five major blood group systems were searched for similarity to those of the Melungeons. Calculations of the Mean Measure of Divergence (MMD) identified populations from the Mediterranean region and from coastal Europe that do not differ significantly from the Melungeons. All others, including Amerindians, differ widely. Hybridization with Indians or with Blacks is not required for the data to fit Mediterranean populations. However, if it is assumed that the Melungeons are basically English, a considerable black component is required. These results are consistent with the Melungeon tradition that they are Portuguese, and are in substantial agreement with the findings of Pollitzer and Brown, whose 1969 data provided the basis for the present calculations."
This statement from Brent Kennedy's The Melungeons: The Resurrection of a Proud People; An Untold Story of Ethnic Cleansing in America sums up the genetic data:
"I contend that the remnants of Joao (“Juan”) Pardo’s forts, joined by Portuguese refugees from Santa Elena, and possibly a few stray Dominicans and Jesuits, exiled Moorish French Huguenots, and escaped Acadians, along with [Sir Francis] Drake’s and perhaps other freed Turkish, Moorish, and Iberian captives, survived on these shores, combined forces over the ensuing years, moved to the hinterlands, intermarried with various Carolina and Virginia Native Americans, and eventually became the reclusive Melungeons."
Great post.
bump
Not an auspicious beginning, acronymically speaking ...
"The homes had windows and oval shaped doors."
Hobbits?
I remember reading about them in the Tennessee Blue Book in school. Of course that was in the 50's when we actually studied history.
I'm a grumpy old Tennessee curmudgeon but I appreciate the sentiment.
BTTT
The MRC believes these settlers came to the coast of South Carolina in 1567 under the leadership of a Spanish captain, Juan Pardo. The settlers consisted of approximately 250 soldiers, their wives and children.
(Kennedy's theory challenged the most commonly accepted theory of Melungeon origin: that they were Appalachian "tri-racial isolates," a mixture of "poor" whites, African slaves and "renegade" Native Americans -- the definition, in fact, attached to Melungeon in Webster's Third New International Dictionary as recently as 15 years ago.)
Just curious why they don't accept what was reported back in the 1600's. They said they were "Portuguee". That would seem to me to be more reliable than someone's theory in 1993.
Because the report came from the French?
...Deu 30:3 The Lord thy God will bring back again thy captivity, and will have mercy on thee, and gather thee again out of all the nations, into which he scattered thee before.
Deu 30:4 If thou be driven as far as the poles of heaven, the Lord thy God will fetch thee back from hence,
Deu 30:5 And will take thee to himself, and bring thee into the land which thy fathers possessed, and thou shalt possess it: and blessing thee, he will make thee more numerous than were thy fathers.
Deu 30:6 The Lord thy God will circumcise thy heart, and the heart of thy seed: that thou mayst love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul, that thou mayst live.
Deu 30:9 And the Lord thy God will make thee abound in all the works of thy hands,....thy land, and in the plenty of all things. For the Lord will return to rejoice over thee in all good things, as he rejoiced in thy fathers:
Not the French but I do know a copy of the report is available from the state of Virginia.
The French found them in 1690 in the western Carolina mountains, puzzling at their claim to be "Portyghee." And the Scotch-Irish settlers who moved down the Shenandoah Valley in the 1750s found them in the far reaches of southwestern Virginia and northeast Tennessee, pushing them farther into the Appalachians of northeast Tennessee and northwest North Carolina and laying claim to the fertile Melungeon valley land.
That's interesting. Thanks.
I never heard of them until today – that’s one of the reasons I like FR. Learn something new every day.
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