In the 19th and the early 20th centuries, they were sometimes identified as "Portuguese," Native American, or light-skinned African American. According to the principle of partus sequitur ventrem, which Virginia incorporated into law in 1662, children born in the colonies were assigned the social status of their mother regardless of their father's ethnicity or citizenship. the author's, based upon her reading and research of various no names were given. 1932: Ulmann and Niles travel to Whitesburg (Letcher Co.), Hazard (Perry Co.), Cumberland (Harlan Co.), and Kingdom Come (Letcher Co.) KY, to work on a project to take photographs for Allen H. Eaton's Handicrafts of the Southern Highlands that was published in 1937. Genetic testing has strongly supported the idea that Melungeons have a great deal of Southern European and Native American blood. Sometimes, they were listed as "white" or sometimes as "black" or "negro" but almost never as "Indian". [41] (Lee County, Virginia borders Hancock County, Tennessee.) The journalist Will Allen Dromgoole wrote several articles on the Melungeons in the 1890s. On this one they visit, Louisa (Lawrence Co), Hazard (Perry Co), and Whitesburg (Letcher Co) , KY. called different names in different areas. Those who have one of these diseases have reason to believe that someone in their ancestry had an ethnic disposition to this particular disease. Many Indian descendants also have this type of teeth. [40], In December 1943, Virginia State Registrar of Vital Statistics, Walter Ashby Plecker, sent county officials a letter warning against "colored" families trying to pass as "white" or "Indian" in violation of the Racial Integrity Act of 1924. The court record of Jacob Perkins vs. John White (1858) in Johnson County, Tennessee, provides definitions of the time related to race and free people of color. What are the Common Melungeon Surnames? Nancy Sparks Morrison Typical Melungeon physical traits are said to include dark hair and skin with light-colored eyes. Ancestors are hard to find before 1850. The Three Musketeers The Count of Monte Cristo. Some descendants have had He claimed to have ancestors who were persecuted for racial reasons. by Nancy Sparks Morrison April/May 2001. . Most recently, the History Channel led off a report on Melungeons with talk of shovel teeth. The families known as "Melungeons" in the 19th century were generally well integrated into the communities in which they lived, but they may still have been affected by racism. There is also a ridge on the back of the first exciting challenge of being a PublicPeople researcher and writer. Although there is no consensus on how many such groups exist, estimates range as high as 200,000.[1][2]. She criticized Kennedy for trying 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. parentage do. Harry M. Caudill, Through The Back Door: Melungeon Literacies and 21. Patriarch's Table) by Johnnie Rhea, 2011. This is the very first When autocomplete results are available use up and down arrows to review and enter to select. The dark complexion, hair, and eyes of many Melungeons suggests that they may have a high proportion of Hispanic or Middle Eastern ancestors. Winkler, Wayne (2004). Document names and birth, death and marriage details for five generations of your family with this type-in genealogy chart. Some of the early multiracial families were ancestors of the later Melungeons, but each family line must be traced separately. Kathy Lyday, a professor at Elon University in North Carolina, has said that in older photos the physical appearance of Melungeons looks almost "Mediterranean or Middle Eastern." A Spanish influence is also possible. Academic historians have not found any evidence for this thesis, and it is unsupported by results from the Melungeon DNA Project. There were differences between how people identified themselves and how others identified them. Also known as the "Lost People of Appalachia," these darker-skinned people were called "Melungeons," a word derived from the Arabic "Melun-Jinn" meaning one who has been abandoned by God - a cursed soul. Portagees. Caudill understood that these mixed bloods were During the 18th and the early 19th centuries, census enumerators classified them as "mulatto," "other free," or as "free persons of color." The surname Goins is also found among the Lumbee of southern North Carolina, a multi-racial group that has been recognized by the state as a Native American tribe. They were acquitted, presumably by demonstrating to the court's satisfaction that they had no appreciable black ancestry. If the families happened to be Catholic, their churches continued to record births and marriages as being among "Indian" families, but the process of loss of historical and cultural continuity appeared to have happened also with some of the non-reservation remnant Lenape Indians of Delaware.[21]. It appears the name arose as an exonym, which a neighboring people of whatever origin called the multiracial people. "Walking Toward the Sunset: The Melungeons of Appalachia", Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press. Kennedy's work was controversial. Generally, specific lines within families have to be traced to document such identity. [43] The spelling of the term varied widely, as was common for words and names at the time. Who are some famous Melungeons? An example was "Spanish Peggy" Gibson, the wife of Vardy Collins. [14], Contemporary accounts documented that Melungeon ancestors were considered by appearance to be mixed race. However, there is some evidence that Vardy Collins and Shep Gibson had settled in Hawkins (what is now Hancock County) by 1790. Instantly download research guides for all 50 U.S. states, plus Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C., for less than $1 each! Although many institutions expressed an interest, the University of Oregon was willing to commit to preserving the collection in its entirety, and became the permanent home of the Doris Ulmann Collection. He had a very indistinct definition of Melungeons although the group had been extensively studied and documented by other researchers. The mystery is beginning to unfold, thanks to genealogical DNA tests. Hay fever, bad eyesight, deviated septum - can't breathe through my nose very well , short, probably a few phobias over on the mental side. A version of this article appeared in the December 2003 issue of Family Tree Magazine. Please note there is no proof whatsoever that the people who were called 'Melungins' by their neighbors ever self identified as such. The following are other multi-racial groups that at one time were classified as tri-racial isolates. the 1929 issue of 'Pictorial Photography in America'. Other ridges are Keep an eye out for census designations of mulatto or fpc (free person of colour); as far as is known, no one was ever designated Melungeon on census records. Kennedy wrote the ground breaking The Melungeons: The Resurrection of a Proud People: An Untold Story of Ethnic Cleansing in America. So who are these two boys ? [5] Descriptions of Melungeons have varied widely over time. The professional genealogist and historian Virginia E. DeMarce reviewed his 1994 book and found that Kennedy's documentation of his Melungeon ancestry was seriously flawed. Melungeons are a group of people who, by definition, are people who have a mixed ethnicity from a variety of other cultures. Oct 23, 2015 - Explore Karen Norcross's board "MELUNGEON PEOPLE" on Pinterest. This pathfinder contains general history, cultural studies, linguistic studies, genetic studies, fiction, and nonfiction works about the Melungeons. It was used by Edmund Spenser as the name of a trickster figure in his epic poem, The Faerie Queene (15901596), which was popular in Elizabethan England. For example, some Melungeons are allegedly identifiable by shovel-shaped incisors, a dental feature more commonly found among Native Americans and Northeast Asians, but not restricted to these peoples. [16] It had been designated as "mulattoes" in an earlier record of 1755. There may also be "Native American features," as well as "a particular type of bump or ridge at the back of the head (usually just above the neck) known at the Melungeon bump." 18 Home; About Us; Tanita Scale; Workshops; Testimonials; Recipes; melungeon bump images Edward Price's dissertation on Mixed-Blood Populations of the Eastern United States as to Origins, Localizations, and Persistence (1950) stated that children of European and free black unions had also intermarried with persons of alleged Native American ancestry. This is rather difficult to describe. He directed the offices to reclassify members of certain families as black, which caused the loss for numerous families of documentation in records that showed their continued identification as Native American. Ulmanns photo, Melungeon Boys, taken in Kentucky in the The colloquial term 'Melungeon' was not used in Kentucky. Nodular melanomas also form in the deepest layer of the skin. They will be deleted. Rootsweb is returning a little at a time. Of the 304 matted photographs, approximately half are platinum prints that were mounted and signed by Ulmann; the others are silver gelatin prints developed by Lifshey. What are common melungeon last names? [48] After an unsubstantiated hypothesis, popularized by N. Brent Kennedy, that Melungeons are of Turkish origin, some people have identified as having an enlarged external occipital protuberance, dubbed an "Anatolian bump".[47][49]. Brent Kennedy and others first began talking about these characteristics and their significance over a decade ago, and many of those who have reported on his work come up with the same mistaken interpretation -- that these are "Melungeon" traits. 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