According to Dr. Kennedy, the Melungeons were "a people who almost certainly intermarried with Powhatans, Pamunkeys, Creeks, Catawbas, Yuchis, and Cherokees to form what some have called, perhaps a bit FANCIFULLY, a `new race'. Dr. Kennedy does not believe that the Melungeons can be called a `race of people'. No dictionary definition of race fits with what we know of the Melungeons and recently, the American Anthropological Association, declared that `race', was an inaccurate, artificial way of defining a people and was no longer of any value.
Certain surnames are associated with the Melungeons:
Finding out about the Melungeons and my possible connection to them is the MOST fascinating thing I have EVER run into in my 20 years of genealogical research. The `so-called,' Melungeons were `discovered' in the Appalachian Mountains in 1654 by English explorers and were described as being `dark-skinned, reddish-brown complexioned people supposed to be of Moorish descent, who were neither Indian nor Negro, but had fine European features, and claimed to be Portuguese'. (Louise Davis, "The Mystery of the Melungeons." Nashville Tennessean, 22 September, 1963, 16.)
In April of 1673, James Needham, an Englishman and Gabriel Arthur, possibly an indentured servant came with approximately eight Indians, as explorers to the Tennessee Valley. There, Needham described finding "hairy people .... (who) have a bell which is six foot over which they ring morning and evening and at that time a great number of people "congregrate togather and talkes" in a language not English nor any Indian dialect that the accompanying Indians knew. And yet these people seemingly looked European. Needham described them as "hairy, white people which have long beards and whiskers and weares clothing". This bell seems to me to speak of a Latin influence among these people. Other, later explorers, found people who lived in log cabins with peculiar arched windows. Dr. Kennedy says that by the late 1700's they were practicing the Christian religion.
These people claimed that they were descended from a group of Portugese who had been shipwrecked or abandoned on the Atlantic coast. (Byron Stinson, "The Melungeons," American History Illustrated, November, 1973:41) The term they used was `Portyghee'. In other documents, some of these peoples were also described as having red hair and others with VERY distinctive blue or blue/green eyes. This description leads me to believe that these people were not Native American Indians. Altogether they must have been a striking looking people.
Most Americans have been taught in school about the Lost Colony and Jamestown in 1607, Plymouth in 1620, with a few Spaniards and a smattering of Viking thrown in for good measure. Where did these people come from? First of all, as the mixed-ancestry descendents of native Americans as well as other ethnic identities, many Melungeons will find this question to be offensive -- many of their true ancestors were ALREADY here, prior to contact with European and African in-migrants, the Official Voice of the Second Union Planning Committee says. But recent research is giving an interesting answer to that question. And from that research I am led to believe that. they are a sizable mixed-ethnic population spread throughout the southeastern United States and into southern Ohio and Indiana. While the term `Melungeon' is most commonly applied to those group members living in eastern Kentucky, southwestern Virginia, eastern Tennessee, and southern West Virginia, related mixed-ancestry populations also include the Carmel Indians of southern Ohio, the Brown People of Kentucky, the Guineas of West Virginia, the We-Sorts of Maryland, the Nanticoke-Moors of Delaware, the Cubans and Portuguese of North Carolina, the Turks and Brass Ankles of South Carolina, and the Creoles and Redbones of Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. The term 'Black Dutch, or Black Scot/Irish/French/Swede' was frequently used to hide Melungeon ancestry so anyone with this term in their family's background needs to look into Melungeon ancestry..
There is also new evidence or rather old evidences re-examined without prejudice, which show a significant Spanish and Portuguese presence in sixteenth-century America, including the large South Carolina coastal colony of Santa Elena, as well as five outlying forts in what is now present day South Carolina, North Carolina, north Georgia, and east Tennessee. Additionally many of the Spanish and Portuguese newcomers were so-called `Conversos', - that is, ethnic Jewish and Moorish people who had converted to Catholicism prior to or during the Spanish Inquisition. Evidence is also strong (see the work of English historian David Beers Quinn) that in 1586 Sir Francis Drake deposited several hundred Turkish and Moorish sailors, liberated from the Spanish, in present-day Central America, on the coast of North Carolina at Roanoke Island. No trace was found of these people when later English vessels dropped anchor for re-supplying.
By the time that the first U.S. census was conducted, the admixture and cultural fusing there had been there for 200 years. This ensured that the story would remain hidden and buried, and that no amount of the census research could ever tell the story accurately. Traditional genealogy can not be used to find these people. There are no written records, no censuses, no marriage or death notices.
Dr. Kennedy's interest in the Melungeons began with an illness that took him to the emergency room in Atlanta, Georgia where he was diagnosed with erythema nodosum sarcoidosis. In researching his own illness, Dr. Kennedy found that it is a disease of primarily Middle Eastern and Mediterrean peoples, although it is not unknown among the Irish and Scandanavians. He later discovered it was equally
common among the Portuguese immigrants of New England, and both southeastern Blacks and Caucasians of seemingly unrelated backgrounds. He was told that he would just have to wait to see if he lived or died. How could a southerner, of Appalachian roots, have a Mediterrean disease? It was this question that Dr. Kennedy set out to answer, by tracing his family background, and in the process he `rediscovered his heritage'. His book, mentioned earlier, is not about historical research, but his family's genealogy and theoretical problem solving.
© by Nancy Sparks Morrison
