Melungeon - DNA Testing

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.

Beginning in 2005, Family Tree DNA has administered the Melungeon DNA Project. Jack Goins, an independent researcher and archivist for Hawkins County, is coordinator. Other volunteers aid him as administrators. The goal has been 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 and R1a; and I1, and E1b1a, respectively.

The European haplotypes cannot be traced to any one national population, but in the early years, most settlers and indentured servants were from England. In addition, the historian Ira Berlin has suggested that what he called the charter generation of enslaved or servant people in the Chesapeake Bay colony likely included 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.

The April 2012 issue of the Journal of Genetic Geneaology includes the results of the Family Tree DNA Melungeon Core Project since 2005. The lines of 69 males and eight females have been tested; the results state that "the families historically called Melungeons are the offspring of both European and sub-Saharan African men and white women of northern or central European origin."