Melungeon - Legends

Legends

In spite of being culturally and linguistically identical to their white neighbors, these multiracial families were of a sufficiently different physical appearance to provoke 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. An example was "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 or slaves. The major parts of Melungeon ancestry are northern European and African, given the history of settlement in the Melungeons' time and place of origin (late 17th-early 18th century eastern Virginia).

Given historical evidence of Native American settlement patterns, Cherokee Nation 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 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. Nor have DNA analyses revealed any evidence to support these suppositions.

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, genealogists, and the Melungeon DNA Project. 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 (making them free at birth) and men of African descent.