Scott Withrow Paper
Red Bones: The Appalachian Connection
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A Paper Presented by Scott Withrow
Fourth Union, June 22, 2002
Introduction
In recent years, a number of New Social Historians have specialized in certain regions of Appalachia and, also, the origin of ethnic groups therein.
1These scholars have often defined Appalachia in terms of a European-derived society, a Pennsylvania cultural hearth, and a northeast to southwest migration along the Great Wagon Road.2 Focusing on the lives of ordinary people, such historians as Tyler Blethen and Curtis Wood, for example, have written with great insight about the Scots-Irish in western North Carolina.3 Clearly, these studies are important, but Appalachian settlement and cultural
patterns included other hearths and other heritages, making Appalachia not “a monomorphic
culture but a mosaic.”4 Thus native and African culture, a coastal-piedmont cultural hearth, and an
east-west migration become important. The Red Bones were one such coastal-piedmont culture to emerge in the genealogical murkiness of colonial America and become part of “a great post-Revolutionary War migration of people....into Appalachia.”5
But any attempt to identify Red Bones and document their westward migration is fraught with difficulties. As Tyler Blethen and Curtis Wood have noted, “There have been several attempts to determine the ethnic origins of America’s early settlers. The task is a difficult one, and attempts have provoked criticism and doubts. Examination of a reasonably small community (or family) allows for greater certainty but still remains only approximate”6 With this in mind, an examination of one family, the
Ashworths, convincingly presents the themes of border and peripheral society, of ethnic identity, and
acculturation in pre-industrial America in the context of Red Bone migration.
Red Bones
Evidence from various sources indicates the Red Bones were a mixed-race people residing in the Pee Dee region of South Carolina at the start of the American Revolution.7 The term, Red Bone, has had various meanings in history: To some it no doubt meant high
cheek bones and copper skin; to others, simply “mixed-blood.” Melungeon researcher
Brent Kennedy sees it, in theory, as the anglicized Turkish name, ray-dag-bin.8 All meanings, however, appear to imply a mixed ethnicity. As with the term Melungeon,
there is little doubt that at one time Red Bone was a term of derision. Researcher Don
Marler concludes that Red Bones share common surnames based on his study of Red
Bones in Louisiana and Texas. Surnames include Bass, Brown, Clark, Davis, Harper,
Hart, Knight, Martin, Moore, Perkins, Powell, Thompson, West, White, Willis, Williams,
Woods and Wright.9 Clearly, these are not always Red Bone names, but such factors as
family group migration, resultant communities, concomitant designation as “free person of
color,” “free black”, or “mulatto” and consequential discriminatory practices, serve to help
indicate Red Bone ancestry. The same allied families can be documented on the North
Carolina frontier, in North Georgia, in Louisiana, and in Texas.10
The literature on mixed-race identity in general presents various arguments. Most authors
suggest a colonial Virginia-Carolina cultural hearth,11 but there the agreement ends. The
debate will continue over bi-racial, tri-racial and quadri-racial identity, some pointing to a
predominantly African-American identity;12 and, others, to a predominantly
Native-American or white identity.13 The critical factor, however, is how Red Bones were perceived by “white” society and their assignment, in many instances, of a minority
status. Importantly, “one must examine social, economic, political, and cultural
configurations and not merely the racial mixture itself in order to explain the emergence of
separate mixed-blood (mixed ethnic) groups.”14 Darlene Wilson has made observations of
Melungeon ethnicity, relevant also to Red Bone ethnicity: “The complexity of upcountry
Southern social relations among mixed-ancestry people cannot adequately be rendered in
simple either/or models nor by admonishing us to consider them as simply tri-racial
isolates.”15 “Every family line will be differently constructed and one should be wary of
over-generalization.”16 Wilson offers a new paradigm to guide the debate: “a two-class society: men and not men” and “a two-caste society: people of color and the uncolored.”17
Minority status in such a context was demonstrated, especially, in 19th century court cases
in Tennessee and Texas. On July 17, 1858, the Johnson County (Tennessee) Court
rendered a decision on the case of Jacob F. Perkins who sued another man for calling him
a “free Negro.” The court took depositions from fifty-nine persons who had known the
(Redbone-Lumbee?) Perkins family near the Pee Dee River in South Carolina. Most
described Jacob’s great-grandfather, Joshua as a “free negro”, and, thus, the court ruled
that Joshua Perkins was a “free Negro.”18 One deponent said that “Joshua Perkins was
known of the Portuguese race ....they kept a ferry in South Carolina.” Perhaps the seventy-seven-year old Daniel Stout gave the most telling deposition:
“Never heard him called a negro. People in those days said nothing about such things.”19
The case also points to a Pee Dee origin and to the realities of the Revolutionary Era, when, perhaps, the war created acceptance of mixed-bloods who served white interests, i. e., those who fought as Patriots,20 or the cultural milieu was such that it truly didn’t matter to some as the Stout deposition suggests.
The Texas case came in response to an act passed by the Texas Congress on February 5, 1840, “which prohibited the immigration of free blacks and ordered all free black residents to vacate the Republic of Texas within two years or be sold into slavery.”21 “The (Jefferson County, Texas) Ashworths, due to their dark features were considered to be “free persons of color” by many. To prevent the Ashworths from being expelled from Texas a large number of their neighbors drafted petitions to the (Texas) Congress to exempt the Ashworths, which the Congress did several months later. The resulting Ashworth Law contained a generic exception, but it specifically named the Ashworth brothers (William, Aaron, Abner and Moses).”22 The Texas case, as the Tennessee case, was over ethnicity, and again, it pointed to a South Carolina origin (Pendleton District, now Pickens and Oconee Counties) and to marriage into the Perkins family (James, Jr.
Ashworth to Polly Perkins, daughter of Joshua Perkins and Mary Mixon of South Carolina),23 likely the same Joshua Perkins referred to in the Tennessee case.
Records related to the Revolution and post-Revolution Era America identify some of the Ashworths as loyalists.24 It appears that confiscation of their land,25 was the major factor in their westward migration and border, peripheral lifestyle.
A hardening of attitudes, also, worked against mixed-race people. Laws such as the following North Carolina law reflect southern attitudes and represent the situation in the first two decades of the nineteenth century.26
All Negroes, Indians, Mulattoes, and all Persons of Mixed Blood descended from Negro and Indian Ancestors, to the Fourth Generation inclusive (though one Ancestor of each Generation may have been a white Person) whether Bond or free, shall be deemed and taken to be incapable in Law to be
Witnesses in any case whatsoever except against each other.27
1 Drake, A History of Appalachia, p. 1
2 Mitchell, Appalachian Frontiers, p. 2.
3 Drake, p. 69
4 Raitz and Ulack, Appalachia: A Regional Geography, p. 113.
5 Drake, p. 61
6 Blethen and Wood, "A Trader on the Western Carolina Frontier,", p. 151
7 Gregg, History of the Old Cheraws. Also see Marler, The Lousiana
Redbones and V. Ashworth, The
Ashworth Family
8 Kennedy, Melungeon Update, p. 6
9 Marler, p. 12
10 I have surveyed a number of North Georgia cemeteries. See also,
Marler: also, Davis, "Forgotten Union Guerrillas of the North Georgia
Mountains" for the story of Dr. John Ashworth.
11 Gildemeister, "Local Complexities of Race in the Rural South:
Racially Mixed People in South Carolina," p. 9.
12 See Heinegg, Free African-Americans of Virginia and North Carolina.
Paul Heinegg has provided us with an excellent resource.
13 Ashworth, Vanda. The Ashworth Family
14 Gildemeister, p. 17.
15 Wilson, "A Response to Heinige", p. 292
16 Wilson, p. 293
17 Wilson, p. 294
18 Heinegg, pp. 698-700
19 Heinegg, p. 700
20 Guildemeister, p. 20. I made the observation on "those who fought as
Patriots."
21 Barkley, The New Handbook of Texas, pp. 267-7=68
22 Murrah, The Ashworth Family, p. 2
23 My observation on ethnicity and a South Carolina origin. See Murrah,
p. 2 for marriages
24 Clark, Loyalists in the Southern Campaign, p. 88; Holcomb, Deed
Abstracts of Tryon, Lincoln and Rutherford Counties, North Carolina,
1769-1786
25 Family tradition corroborated by Rutherford County Court Minutes
26 Prince, "William Goyens, Free Negro on the Texas Frontier", p. 5.
27 Franklin, The Free Negro in North Carolina, p. 82
