Melungeon

Melungeons

Regions with significant populations
Originally in the vicinity of Cumberland Gap (East Tennessee and Eastern Kentucky. Later migrations to throughout the United States)
Languages
English
Religion
Various Protestant
Related ethnic groups
Redbones, Carmel Indians

Melungeon (/məˈlʌndʒən/ mə-LUN-jən) is a term traditionally applied to one of a number of "tri-racial isolate" groups of the Southeastern United States, mainly in the Cumberland Gap area of central Appalachia, which includes portions of East Tennessee, Southwest Virginia, and East Kentucky. Tri-racial describes populations thought to be of mixed European and sub-Saharan African ancestry. Although there is no consensus on how many such groups exist, estimates range as high as 200.

Beginning in 1995, the researcher Paul Heinegg published updated documentation of numerous families of free people of color in the Upper South. His historic research found that most such families in the censuses of 1790-1810 in North Carolina and Virginia could be traced to origins in unions between white women and African men in colonial Virginia, whose descendants were free. Since then, he has frequently updated his book and online version of data.

Since 2005, the Melungeon DNA Project has conducted DNA testing of identified Melungeon lines. It has made its results public, which have shown European mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) for the female lines and both European and sub-Saharan African haplogroups in the male lines. Both females and males in several families traditionally identified as Melungeon and considered so by researchers have been tested. An April 2012 article on the Melungeons in the Journal of Genetic Genealogy summarized additional DNA testing of the last several years, together with historic evidence. The varied DNA tests continue to show European mtDNA and both European and sub-Saharan Y chromosome haplogroups for individuals with identified Melungeon surnames.

Definition

The ancestry and identity of Melungeons have been highly controversial subjects. Secondary sources have disagreed as to their ethnic, linguistic, cultural, and geographic origins and identity, as they were and are of mixed ancestry. They might accurately be described as a loose collection of families of diverse origins who migrated, settled nearby and intermarried with one another, mostly in Hancock and Hawkins counties in Tennessee, nearby areas of Kentucky, and Lee County, Virginia. Their ancestors can generally be traced back to colonial Virginia and the Carolinas.

While the U.S. census has had a category for Melungeon, tabulated under "Some Other Race 600-999", most scholars do not think Melungeons should be classified as a distinct ethnicity. They describe them instead as one of numerous multiracial groups with origins in mixed unions of white women with European men, men with African haplogroups and, less frequently, Native Americans, especially originating in colonial Virginia when the working classes lived closely together.

Melungeons have been defined as having racially mixed ancestry; they do not exhibit characteristics that can be classified as of a single racial phenotype. Most modern-day descendants of Appalachian families traditionally regarded as Melungeon are generally European American in appearance, often, though not always, with dark hair and eyes, and a swarthy or olive complexion. Descriptions of Melungeons have varied widely over time; in the 19th and early 20th century, they were sometimes called or identified as "Portuguese," "Native American," or "light-skinned African American". During the nineteenth century, free people of color sometimes identified as Portuguese or Native American in order to avoid being classified as black in the segregated slave societies. Other Melungeon individuals and families are accepted and identify as white, particularly since the mid-20th century. They have tended to "marry white" for decades.

Scholars and commentators have not agreed on who should be included under the term Melungeon. Contemporary authors identify differing lists of surnames to be included as families associated with Melungeons. The English surname Gibson and Irish surname Collins appear frequently; the genealogist Pat Elder calls them "core" surnames. Vardy Collins and Shep Gibson had settled in Hancock County, and they and other Melungeons are documented by land deeds, slave sales and marriage licenses. Other researchers include the surnames Powell, LeBon, Bowling, Bunch, Goins, Goodman, Heard, Minor, Mise, Mullins, and several others. (Family lines have to be researched individually as not all families with these surnames are Melungeon.) As with many other surname groups, not all families of each surname have been of the same racial background and ancestry.

The original meaning of the word "Melungeon" is obscure (see Etymology below). From about the mid-19th to the late 20th centuries, it referred exclusively to one tri-racial isolate group, the descendants of the multiracial Collins, Gibson, and several other related families located in Newman's Ridge, Vardy Valley, and other settlements in and around Hancock and Hawkins counties, Tennessee.

Origins

A complex question

The origin of the mixed-race families later to be called "Melungeons" was mostly the unions among the working classes in the Chesapeake Bay region in the 17th and 18th centuries. Indentured servants, slaves and free workers lived and worked closely together, leading to marriages and unions. According to the principle of partus sequitur ventrem, which Virginia incorporated into law in 1662, children were to be assigned the social status of their mother, regardless of their father's ethnicity or citizenship. This meant that the children of slave mothers were born into slavery. But it also meant that the children of white women, even if fathered by enslaved African men, were born free. Such unions created many of the oldest free families of color. Early colonial Virginia was very much a "melting pot" of peoples, but not all of these early multiracial families were ancestral to the later Melungeons. Over the generations, most individuals of the group called Melungeon were of European and African descent, whose ancestors had been free in colonial Virginia.

A commonly held myth about the Melungeons of east Tennessee was that they were an indigenous people of Appalachia who lived there before the arrival of the first white settlers. Instead, scholars have documented by a variety of historic records that the earliest Melungeon ancestors migrated from Virginia, as did their Anglo-American neighbors. Paul Heinegg has traced free people of color families on the frontier in the censuses of 1790–1810 and found that most were descended from African Americans free in Virginia in colonial times, the descendants of working-class white women (who were indentured servants or free) and African men, free, indentured servants or slaves. A minority were descended from slaves who had been manumitted, some as early as the seventeenth century.

Evidence

Free people of color are documented as migrating with European-American neighbors in the first half of the 18th century to the frontier of Virginia and to North and South Carolina, where they received land grants like their neighbors. For instance, the Collins, Gibson, and Ridley (Riddle) families owned land adjacent to one another in Orange County, North Carolina, where they and the Bunch family were listed as "free Molatas (mulattos)", taxable on tithes in 1755. By settling in frontier areas, free people of color found more amenable living conditions and could escape some of the racial strictures of the Tidewater plantation areas.

The historian Jack D. Forbes has discussed laws in South Carolina related to racial classification:

"In 1719, South Carolina decided who should be an "Indian" for tax purposes since American [Indian] slaves were taxed at a lesser rate than African slaves. The act stated: "And for preventing all doubts and scruples that may arise what ought to be rated on mustees, mulattoes, etc. all such slaves as are not entirely Indian shall be accounted as negro." This is an extremely significant passage because it clearly asserts that "mustees" and "mulattoes" were persons of part American [Indian] ancestry. My judgment (to be discussed later) is that a mustee was primarily part-African and American [Indian] and that a mulatto was usually part-European and American [Indian]. The act is also significant because it asserts that part-American [Indians] with or without African ancestry could be counted as Negroes, thus having an implication for all later slave censuses." [Note: This source applies only to South Carolina, not to Virginia or North Carolina, the main places of Melungeon origin. His assessment of the meaning of "mulatto" in colonial society is not widely held.]

Beginning about 1767, some of the ancestors of the Melungeons moved from the Tidewater area northwest to the frontier New River area of Virginia, where they are listed on tax lists of Montgomery County, Virginia, in the 1780s. From there they migrated south in the Appalachian Range to Wilkes County, North Carolina, where some are listed as "white" on the 1790 census. They resided in a part of that county which became Ashe County, where they are designated as "other free" in 1800.

Collins and Gibson families (identified as Melungeon ancestors) were recorded in 1813 as members of the Stony Creek Primitive Baptist Church in Scott County, Virginia, where they appear to have been treated as social equals of the white members. The earliest documented use of the term "Melungeon" is found in the minutes of this church (see Etymology below). While there are historical references to the documents, the evidence has come from transcribed copies.

From the Virginia and North Carolina frontiers, the families migrated west into Kentucky and Tennessee. The earliest known Melungeon in Northeast Tennessee was Millington Collins, who executed a deed in Hawkins County in 1802. There is some evidence that Vardy Collins and Shep Gibson had settled in Hancock County before 1790. Several Collins and Gibson households were listed in Floyd County, Kentucky in 1820, when they were classified as "free persons of color". On the 1830 censuses of Hawkins and Grainger County, Tennessee, Collins and Gibson families are listed as "free-colored". Melungeons were residents of the part of Hawkins that became Hancock County in 1844.

Contemporary accounts documented that Melungeon ancestors were considered to be mixed race by appearance. During the 18th and early 19th centuries, census enumerators designated them as "mulatto", "other free", or as "free persons of color". Sometimes they were listed as "white", sometimes as "black" or "negro", but almost never as "Indian". One family described as "Indian" was the Ridley family, listed as such on a 1767 Pittsylvania County, Virginia, tax list. They had been designated as "mulattos" in another record of 1755.

During the 19th century, due to their intermarriage with white families producing descendants of increasingly white appearance and ancestry, Melungeon-surnamed families began to be classified as white on census records with increasing frequency. This trend has continued to the present. In 1935, a state of Nevada newspaper anecdotally described Melungeons as "mulattoes" with "straight hair".

Assimilation

Researchers have shown that the historical evidence through numerous court records demonstrates that the Melungeon families sought to identify as and to be accepted as white. Paul Heinegg traced the Joshua Perkins family of Johnson County, Tennessee and its descendants, finding that generations of the family married white or mulatto people, which led to increasingly European-American or white appearance and proportion of ancestry among their descendants.

As the scholar Ariela Gross has shown by analysis of court cases, the shift from "mulatto" to "white" was often dependent upon appearance and Especially community perception of a person's activities in life, whom one associated with, and whether the person fulfilled the common obligations of citizens. Census takers were generally people of a community, so they classified people racially as they were known by the community. Definitions of racial categories were often imprecise and ambiguous, especially for "mulatto" and "free person of color". In the British North American colonies and the United States at various times in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, "mulatto" could mean a mixture of African and European, African and Native American, European and Native American, or all three. At the same time, these groups intermarried. There were questions about which culture took precedence, if any. Many Native American tribes were organized around matrilineal systems of descent, in which the mother's line was dominant. The slavery-obsessed Southern states tended to classify people of any visible African features as black, as slavery had become a racial caste.

Because of the loose terminology and attitudes to mixed-race persons, remnant non-reservation American Indians in the Upper South were generally not recorded separately as Indians. They were often gradually reclassified as mulatto or free people of color, especially as generations intermarried with neighbors. In the early decades of the 20th century, Virginia and some other states passed laws imposing the one-drop rule, requiring all persons to be classified either as white or black. After Virginia passed its Racial Integrity Act of 1924, officials went so far as to alter existing birth and marriage records to reclassify some mixed-race individuals or families who identified and were recorded as Indian to "colored", destroying their documented continuity of identity. The historical documentation of continuity of self-identified Native American families was lost. This process of loss of historical and cultural continuity appeared to have happened also with some of the non-reservation remnant Indians of Delaware.

Acceptance

The families known as "Melungeons" in the 19th century were generally well integrated into the communities in which they lived, though this is not to say that racism was never a factor in their social interactions. Records show that on the whole they enjoyed the same rights as whites. For example, they held property, voted, and served in the Army; some, such as the Gibsons, owned slaves as early as the 18th century.

Porch of the restored Mahala Mullins Cabin, originally located atop Newman's Ridge

By contrast, perhaps due to the tensions about race and slavery leading up to the Civil War, several Melungeon men were tried in Hawkins County, Tennessee, in 1846 for "illegal voting", under suspicion of being black. They were acquitted, presumably by demonstrating to the court's satisfaction that they had no appreciable black ancestry. (Standards were not as strict as under the laws of the "one drop rule" of the 20th century.) Like some other cases, this was chiefly determined by people testifying as to how the men were perceived by the community and whether they had "acted white" by voting, serving in the militia, or undertaking other common citizens' obligations.

"Law was involved not only in recognizing race, but in creating it; the state itself helped make people white. In allowing men of low social status to perform whiteness by voting, serving on juries, and mustering in the militia, the state welcomed every white man into symbolic equality with the Southern planter. Thus, law helped to constitute white men as citizens, and citizens as white men."

After the American Civil War and during the Reconstruction era (United States), southern whites worried more about racial identity as they struggled to re-assert white supremacy over emancipated freedmen. But issues of race were often brought to court as a result of arguments about money. For example, in 1872 a woman's Melungeon ancestry was evaluated in a trial in Hamilton County, Tennessee. The case was brought by relatives contending over an inheritance of property. They questioned the legitimacy of a marriage between a white man and a woman known to be Melungeon, and argued the marriage was not legitimate because the woman was of black ancestry. Based on testimony of people in the community, the court decided the woman in the case was not of African ancestry, or not recently enough to matter.

Modern anthropological and sociological studies of Melungeon descendants in Appalachia have demonstrated that they have become culturally indistinguishable from their "non-Melungeon" white neighbors: they share a Baptist religious affiliation and other community features. With changing attitudes and a desire for more work opportunities, numerous descendants of the early Melungeon pioneer families have migrated from Appalachia to other parts of the United States. Notable people of declared Melungeon ancestry include Francis Gary Powers, the U-2 pilot who was notable for being shot down over the Soviet Union.

Legends

In spite of being culturally and linguistically identical to their white neighbors, these multiracial families were of a sufficiently different physical appearance to invite speculation as to their identity and origins. In the first half of the 19th century, the pejorative term "Melungeon" began to be applied to these families by local white (European-American) neighbors. Local "knowledge" or myths soon began to arise about these people who lived in the hills of eastern Tennessee. According to Pat Elder, the earliest of these was that they were "Indian" (often specifically "Cherokee"). The Melungeon descendant and researcher Jack Goins states that the Melungeons claimed to be both Indian and Portuguese. One early Melungeon was called "Spanish" ("Spanish Peggy" Gibson, wife of Vardy Collins).

A few ancestors may have been of mixed Iberian (Spanish and/or Portuguese) and African origin, as the historian Ira Berlin has noted that some early slaves and free blacks in the colonies were "Atlantic creoles", mixed-race descendants of Iberian workers and African women in slave ports. Their male descendants grew up bilingual and accompanied Europeans as workers with the slave trade. The major parts of Melungeon ancestry are northern European and African, given the history of multiracial families in the Melungeons' time and place of origin (late 17th-early 18th century eastern Virginia).

Given historical evidence of Native American settlement patterns, Cherokee descent is highly unlikely for the original Melungeon families, who came from Tidewater areas. Some of their descendants may have later intermarried with individuals of Cherokee ancestry in East Tennessee, but they would not necessarily have adopted Cherokee culture. Melungeons in Graysville, Tennessee claimed Cherokee ancestors. The anthropologist E. Raymond Evans (1979) wrote regarding these claims:

"In Graysville, the Melungeons strongly deny their Black heritage and explain their genetic differences by claiming to have had Cherokee grandmothers. Many of the local whites also claim Cherokee ancestry and appear to accept the Melungeon claim...."

The historian C. S. Everett hypothesized that John Collins the Sapony Indian, recorded as being expelled from Orange County, Virginia about January 1743, might be the same man as the Melungeon ancestor John Collins, classified as a "mulatto" in 1755 North Carolina records. But Everett has revised that theory after having discovered evidence that these were two different men named John Collins. Only the latter man, identified as mulatto in the 1755 record in North Carolina, has any proven connection to the Melungeons.

Another source frequently suggested for Melungeon ancestry is the Powhatan, a group of Algonquian-speaking tribes who inhabited Eastern Virginia when the English arrived. During the 19th and 20th centuries, speculation on Melungeon origins continued. Writers recounted folk tales of shipwrecked sailors, lost colonists, hoards of silver, and ancient peoples such as the Carthaginians or Phoenicians. With each writer, new elements were added to the mythology surrounding this group, and more surnames were added to the list of possible Melungeon ancestors. The journalist Will Allen Dromgoole wrote several articles on the Melungeons in the 1890s.

In the late 20th century, amateur researchers have suggested that the Melungeons' ethnic identity may include ancestors who were Turks and Sephardi (Iberian) Jewry. The writers David Beers Quinn and Ivor Noel Hume suggest that the Melungeons are descended from Sephardi Jews who fled the Inquisition and came as sailors to North America. They also suggest that Francis Drake did not repatriate all the Turks he saved from the sack of Cartagena, but some came to the colonies. "Whether any of them got ashore on the Outer Banks and were deserted there when Drake sailed away we cannot say." Academic historians do not support such speculation and have not found any evidence for such a conclusion.

The Internet sources on the group suggest that in the hills of East Tennessee is an enclave of people, likely of Mediterranean or Middle Eastern origin, who have been in the area since before the arrival of the first white settlers. But, such romantic fictions find no support among academic historians and genealogists. The historian Dr. Virginia E. DeMarce, former president of the National Genealogical Society and author of several articles on the Melungeons, said in a 1997 interview with NPR:

"It's not that mysterious once you...do the nitty gritty research one family at a time...basically the answer to the question of where did Tennessee's mysterious Melungeons come from is three words. And the three words are Louisa County, Virginia."

She and Paul Heinegg have found historical documentation in court records, land deeds and other materials showing that most Melungeon ancestors were free people of color, descended from marriages and unions between working-class European-American women (which gave them freedom at birth according to slavery law) and men of African descent.

Etymology

There are many hypotheses about the etymology of the term Melungeon. One theory favored by linguists and many researchers on the topic, and found in several dictionaries, is that the name derives from the French mélange, or mixture. As there were French Huguenot immigrants in Virginia from 1700, their language could have contributed a term.

The scholars Joanne Pezzullo and Karlton Douglas speculate that a more likely derivation of Melungeon, related to the English culture of the colonies, may have been from the now obsolete English word malengin (also spelled mal engin) meaning "guile", "deceit", or "ill intent". It was used by Edmund Spenser as the name of a trickster figure in his epic poem The Faerie Queene (1590–1596), widely popular in Elizabethan England. The phrase "harbored them Melungins" would be equivalent to "harbored someone of ill will", or could mean "harbored evil people", without reference to any ethnicity.

Another theory traces the word to malungu (or malungo), a Luso-African word from Angola meaning shipmate, derived from the Kimbundu word ma'luno, meaning "companion" or "friend".

Kennedy (1994) speculates that it derives from the Turkish melun can (from Arabic mal`un jinn ملعون جنّ), which purportedly means "damned soul". But, the Turkish word can, meaning "soul", is Persian in origin, rather than Arabic. Kennedy apparently confuses it with the Arabic word jinn, better known as genie. He suggests that, at the time, the (condemned soul) was a term used by Turks for Muslims who had been captured and enslaved aboard Spanish galleons.

Some writers try to connect the term Melungeon to an ethnic origin of people designated by that term, but there is no basis for this assumption. It appears the name arose as an exonym, something which neighboring people, of whatever origin, called the multiracial people.

The earliest known written use of the word Melungeon is in an 1813 Scott County, Virginia Stony Creek Primitive Baptist Church record:

"Then came forward Sister Kitchen and complained to the church against Susanna Stallard for saying she harbored them Melungins. Sister Sook said she was hurt with her for believing her child and not believing her, and she won't talk to her to get satisfaction, and both is 'pigedish', one against the other. Sister Sook lays it down and the church forgives her."

On 7 October 1840, the polemical Brownlow's Whig of Jonesborough, Tennessee, published an article entitled "Negro Speaking!" The publisher referred to a rival Democratic politician with a party in Sullivan County as "an impudent Malungeon from Washington City a scoundrel who is half Negro and half Indian," then as a "free negroe". In this and related articles, he does not identify the Democrat by name.

Different researchers have developed their own lists of the surnames of core Melungeon families, as generally, specific lines have to be traced. DeMarce (1992) listed Hale as a Melungeon surname. By the mid-to-late 19th century, the term Melungeon appeared to have been used most frequently to refer to the multi-racial families of Hancock County and neighboring areas. Several other uses of the term in the print media, from mid-19th to early 20th century, have been collected at the Melungeon Heritage Association Website. The spelling of the term varied widely, as was common for words and names at the time; eventually the form "Melungeon" became standard.

Modern identity

The term Melungeon was traditionally considered an insult, a label applied to Appalachian whites who were by appearance or reputation of mixed-race ancestry, though who were not clearly either "black" or "Indian". In Southwest Virginia, the term Ramp was similarly applied to people of mixed race. This term has never shed its pejorative character.

From the late 1960s, Melungeon became a self-identified designation of ethnicity. This shift in meaning was probably due to the popularity of Walk Toward the Sunset, a drama written by playwright Kermit Hunter and produced outdoors. The play was first presented in 1969 in Sneedville, the county seat of Hancock County. Making no claim to historical accuracy, Hunter portrayed the Melungeons as indigenous people of uncertain race who were mistakenly perceived as black by neighboring white settlers. As the drama portrayed Melungeons in a positive, romantic light, many individuals began for the first time to self-identify by that term. Hunter intended for his drama "to improve the socio-economic climate" of Hancock County, and to "lift the Melungeon name 'from shame to the hall of fame'." The play helped revive interest in the history of Melungeons, and some worked to use the facts rather than speculation. The social changes of the 1960s contributed to wider acceptance of minority groups.

Interest in the Melungeons has grown tremendously since the mid-1990s. They were featured in a chapter of the writer Bill Bryson's The Lost Continent as well as N. Brent Kennedy's book on his claimed Melungeon roots, The Melungeons: The Resurrection of a Proud People (1994). With the Internet, many people are doing research in family history. The number of individuals claiming Melungeon heritage has increased rapidly, according to Kennedy.

Some individuals begin to self-identify as Melungeons after reading about the group on a website and discovering their surname on the expanding list of "Melungeon-associated" surnames. Others believe they have certain "characteristic" physical traits or conditions. For example, some Melungeons are allegedly identifiable by shovel-shaped incisors, a dental feature more commonly found among, but not restricted to, Native Americans and Northeast Asians. A second feature attributed by some to Melungeons is an enlarged external occipital protuberance, dubbed an "Anatolian bump", after an unsubstantiated hypothesis, popularized by N. Brent Kennedy, that Melungeons are of Turkish origin. Academic historians have not found any evidence for this thesis, nor is it supported by results from the Melungeon DNA Project, which shows overwhelming northern European and sub-Saharan African ancestry of Melungeon lines.

Internet sites promote the anecdotal claim that Melungeons are more prone to certain diseases, such as sarcoidosis or familial Mediterranean fever, although academic centers have noted that neither of the diseases is confined to a single population. No scientific research supports claims that certain physical traits and conditions are more prevalent among Melungeon families.

Kennedy's claims of ancestral connections to this group have been strongly disputed. The genealogist and historian Dr. Virginia E. DeMarce reviewed his 1994 book: she found that Kennedy's documentation of his Melungeon ancestry was seriously flawed, he had a very indistinct definition of Melungeons, although other researchers have studied them extensively. She criticized him for reaching to include people who might have had other than northern European ancestry; and said that he did not properly take account of existing historical records or recognized genealogical practice in his research. He claimed to have ancestors who were persecuted for racial reasons; she found that his named ancestors were all classified as white in records, held various political offices (which showed they could vote and were supported by their community), and held land. Kennedy responded to her critique in this article.

The Ridgetop Shawnee Tribe of Indians in Kentucky claims that most families commonly identified as Melungeon are of Native American decent and migrated to the region in the late 18th and early to mid-19th centuries. Most families claimed this alternative heritage to explain their dark skin and Indian features and to avoid racial persecution. The Kentucky General Assembly acknowledged the Ridgetop Shawnee’s historical claims by passing resolutions that acknowledged their civic contributions to the state. (Note: The resolutions were not official recognition of tribal status.)

DNA testing

At the suggestion of N. Brent Kennedy, a DNA study on Melungeons was carried out in 2000 by Dr. Kevin Jones of The University of Virginia's College at Wise, using 130 hair and cheek cell samples. These samples were taken from subjects chosen by Kennedy as representative of Melungeon lines. McGowan (2003) described Dr Jones' discovery of the political aspects of genetic research when the results of the study caused disappointment among some observers. "...Jones concluded that the Melungeons are mostly Eurasian, a catchall category spanning people from Scandinavia to the Middle East. They are also a little bit black and a little bit American Indian." This study has to date not been submitted to a peer-reviewed scientific journal, nor has a list of those individuals contributing samples been published. It is unclear to what extent the subjects were descendants of families historically designated or since documented as Melungeon.

More recently, Jack Goins, an independent researcher, has acted as coordinator of the Melungeon DNA Project, a DNA-testing project started in 2005. Its goal is to study the ancestry of lines for which there is academic and genealogical consensus as belonging to historical Melungeon families. Surnames were limited to those identified at least once in historical records as Melungeon during the late 1800s or early 1900s in Hawkins or Hancock counties in Tennessee. According to Jack Goins, the Core Melungeon Group 1 consists of the following surnames: Bunch, Collins, Goins, Gibson, Minor, Williams, Breedlove, Mullins, Denham, Bowlin(g), Moore, Shumake, Bolton, Perkins, Morning, Menley, Hopkins, and Mallet.

The Y-chromosomal DNA testing of male subjects with the Melungeon surnames Collins, Gibson, Goins, Bunch, Bowlin(g), Denham, Mullins, Hopkins, Perkins, Williams, Minor and Moore, has so far revealed evidence of a majority of European and sub-Saharan African ancestry: Y haplogroups R1b, R1a, I1, and E1b1a, respectively.

Taken as a whole, such findings affirm the 19th-century designation of Melungeon ancestors as "mulattoes", that is, descendants of white Europeans and Africans. This is consistent with the conclusions of Paul Heinegg, who based his work on historical documentation such as deeds, court records and tax lists. The line with a variety of haplogroups with roots in Portugal, Spain and Italy is consistent with historian Ira Berlin's research showing that some of the charter generation of enslaved or servant people in the Chesapeake Bay colony were Atlantic creoles, descended from African women and Spanish or Portuguese men. The latter worked in the slave trade at ports in Africa run by Spain and Portugal, and took wives from the indigenous population. Some of their male descendants were enslaved or worked as interpreters and in other roles at the slave ports, and sometimes sailed with the Portuguese fleets, eventually settling in the colonies.

DNA Haplo groups found matched over 75 percent of Portugesse DNA Haplo groups. This helps confirms that through DNA testing in both Melungeon and Portugesse (Latest comprehensive study published by University College London on Portugal Y-Haplogroups. By Beleza, et al., 2006. Contributors: Universidade de Porto, Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Oxford University.) people, the stories of Portugesse ancestry could be confirmed. This Information had also been backed up by leading DNA Genetics company "23 and me" (In 2008, Time magazine named the 23 and me's saliva-based DNA-testing service "Invention of the Year",In 2007 Google, whose co-founder Sergey Brin is married to the co-founder of 23andMe Anne Wojcicki, invested $3,900,000 in the company, along with Genentech, New Enterprise Associates and Mohr Davidow Ventures).</ref> </ref> A more recent study on Portugesse DNA Haplo groups also back up the Melungeon DNA test results conducted by Jack Goins to the current and on going DNA studies in Portugesse people. The News article from New Scientist life also backed up this finding in the December 2008 issue by Ewen Callaway </ref> </ref> </ref> Another source backing up this confirmation was Family tree DNA which has made their portugesse DNA Haplo group's results online for the public to see. Family Tree DNA is used by many of the top geneology companies today, it is also the same company used for Jack Goins' DNA project for the Melungeon DNA project. </ref> </ref></ref> The Cape Verda (Portugesse) DNA Project has also made their DNA findings available to the public which also confirms the Jack Goins Melungeon DNA findigns match those of Portugesse people. </ref> As well as the Portugesse Azorese DNA Project.</ref> The Madeira (portugesse) DNA Project as well backs up the findings.</ref> The Iberian Penisula DNA Project backs these results as well. </ref>

Similar groups

Other so-called "tri-racial isolate" populations in the United States, some of which have been recognized by state governments as Native American, include the following:

Delaware:

• Nanticoke-Moors (and in Maryland)

Florida:

• Dead Lake People of Gulf and Calhoun Counties (also known as "Florida Melungeons")
• Dominickers of Holmes County in the Florida Panhandle

Indiana:

• Ben-Ishmael Tribe, pejoratively called "Grasshopper Gypsies"

Kentucky:

• Magoffin County People (Magoffin and Floyd Counties), also known as Brown People of Kentucky or "Kentucky Melungeons"

Louisiana:

• Redbones (and in Texas)

Maryland:

• Piscataway Indian Nation, formerly also known as We-Sorts, one of three Piscataway-related Native American groups recognized by the state

New York:

• Ramapough Mountain Indians (aka "Jackson Whites") of the Ramapo Mountains (and in New Jersey)

North Carolina:

• Coree or "Faircloth" Indians of Carteret County
• Goinstown Indians in Rockingham, Stokes, and Surry Counties
• Haliwa-Saponi, recognized by the state as Native American
• Lumbee, recognized by the state as Native American
• Person County Indians, aka "Cubans and Portuguese"

Ohio:

• Carmel Indians of Highland County

South Carolina:

• Red Bones (NB: distinct from the Gulf States Redbones)
• Turks
• Brass Ankles

Virginia:

• Goinstown Indians, Henry and Patrick counties
• Monacan Indians (a.k.a. "Issues") of Amherst and Rockingham counties

West Virginia:

• Chestnut Ridge people of Barbour County (also known as Mayles or, pejoratively, "Guineas")

Each of these groupings of mixed-race populations has a particular history. There is evidence for connections between some of them. For example, the Goins surname group have long been identified as Melungeon by people in eastern Tennessee, and the surname Goins is also found among the Lumbee of southern North Carolina.

In his Foreword to the section on Virginia, North, and South Carolina in Heinegg's work on free African Americans, the historian Ira Berlin sums up the history of such groups:

Heinegg's genealogical excavations reveal that many free people of color passed as whites—sometimes by choosing ever lighter spouses over succeeding generations. Even more commonly, they claimed Indian ancestry. Some free people of color invented tribal designations out of whole cloth. Here Heinegg, entering into an area of considerable controversy, explodes what he declares the "fantastic" claims of many so-called tri-racial isolates.

See also

• List of topics related to Black and African people
• Black (people)
• Black Dutch
• Genealogical DNA test
• Mestee
• Mulatto
• Passing (racial identity)
• Plaçage
• Puerto Rican people
• Racial Integrity Act of 1924
• Sabine Free State
• State of Franklin
• Vardy Community School

Bibliography

• Ball, Bonnie (1992). The Melungeons (Notes on the Origin of a Race). Johnson City, Tennessee: Overmountain Press.
• Berlin, Ira (1998). Many Thousands Gone : The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press
• Berry, Brewton (1963). Almost White: A Study of Certain Racial Hybrids in the Eastern United States. New York: Macmillan Press.
• Bible, Jean Patterson (1975). Melungeons Yesterday and Today. Signal Mountain, Tennessee: Mountain Press.
• Bone, Patrick (2001). A Melungeon Winter. Johnson City, TN: Silver Dagger Mysteries.
• Bryson, Bill. (1989). The Lost Continent : Travels in Small Town America.
• DeMarce, Virginia E. (1992). "Verry Slitly Mixt': Tri-Racial Isolate Families of the Upper South – A Genealogical Study", National Genealogical Society Quarterly 80 (March 1992): 5–35, scanned online, Historical-Melungeons
• DeMarce, Virginia E. (1993). "Looking at Legends – Lumbee and Melungeon: Applied Genealogy and the Origins of Tri-Racial Isolate Settlements." National Genealogical Society Quarterly 81 (March 1993): 24–45, scanned online, Historical-Melungeons
• DeMarce, Virginia E. (1996). Review of The Melungeons: Resurrection of a Proud People. National Genealogical Society Quarterly 84 (June 1996): 134–149.
• Dromgoole, Will Allen (1890). "Land of the Malungeons", Nashville Daily American, under the name Will Allen, August 31, 1890: 10, reproduced at Melungeon Heritage Association.
• Elder, Pat Spurlock (1999). Melungeons: Examining an Appalachian Legend, Blountville, Tennessee: Continuity Press.
• Evans, E. Raymond (1979). "The Graysville Melungeons: A Tri-racial People in Lower East Tennessee", Tennessee Anthropologist IV(1): 1–31.
• Everett, Christopher (1998). "Melungeon Historical Realities: Reexamining a Mythopoeia of the Southern United States". Conference paper, Conference on Innovative Perspectives in History, Department of History, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, April 17–18, 1998.
• Forbes, Jack D. (1993). Africans and Native Americans: The Language of Race and the Evolution of Red-Black Peoples. University of Illinois Press.
• Goins, Jack H. (2000). Melungeons: And Other Pioneer Families, Blountville, Tennessee: Continuity Press.
• Heinegg, Paul (2005). FREE AFRICAN AMERICANS OF VIRGINIA, NORTH CAROLINA, SOUTH CAROLINA, MARYLAND AND DELAWARE Including the family histories of more than 80% of those counted as "all other free persons" in the 1790 and 1800 census, Baltimore, Maryland: Genealogical Publishing, 1999–2005. Available in its entirety online.
• Johnson, Mattie Ruth (1997). My Melungeon Heritage: A Story of Life on Newman’s Ridge. Johnson City, Tennessee: Overmountain Press.
• Kennedy, N. Brent, with Robyn Vaughan Kennedy (1994). The Melungeons: The Resurrection of a Proud People. Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press.
• Langdon, Barbara Tracy (1998). The Melungeons: An Annotated Bibliography: References in both Fiction and Nonfiction, Hemphill, Texas: Dogwood Press.
• McGowan, Kathleen (2003). "Where do we really come from?", DISCOVER 24 (5, May 2003)
• Offutt, Chris. (1999) "Melungeons", in Out of the Woods, Simon & Schuster.
• Price, Edward T. (1953). "A Geographic Analysis of White-Negro-Indian Racial Mixtures in Eastern United States", The Association of American Geographers. Annals 43 (June 1953): 138–155.
• Price, Henry R. (1966). "Melungeons: The Vanishing Colony of Newman's Ridge." Conference paper. American Studies Association of Kentucky and Tennessee. March 25–26, 1966.
• Reed, John Shelton (1997). "Mixing in the Mountains", Southern Cultures 3 (Winter 1997): 25–36.
• Vande Brake, Katherine (2001). How They Shine: Melungeon Characters in the Fiction of Appalachia, Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press.
• Williamson, Joel (1980). New People: Miscegenation and Mulattoes in the United States, New York: Free Press.
• Winkler, Wayne (2004). "Walking Toward the Sunset: The Melungeons of Appalachia", Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press. [14]
• Winkler, Wayne (1997). " The Melungeons", All Things Considered. National Public Radio. 21 Sept. 1997.

External links

• Roberta J. Estes, Jack H. Goins, Penny Ferguson, Janet Lewis Crain Melungeons, a Multi-Ethnic Population, 2011
• Melungeon Heritage Association, Official Website
• "The Graysville Melungeons", Tennessee Anthropologist, Nov 1979, on Rootsweb
• Jack Goins Research Study of Melungeon and Appalachian Families
• Paul Heinegg, Free African Americans of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Maryland and Delaware, 1999–2005
• "Melungeons", Digital Library of Appalachia]. Contains photographs and documents, mostly from 1900–1950.