Good Morning POU!
Today, let’s talk about the Appalachian families that are racially referred to as Melungeons.
Melungeon is a term traditionally applied to one of numerous “tri-racial isolate” groups of the Appalachia region of the southeastern United States. Historically, Melungeons were associated with the Cumberland Gap area of central Appalachia, which includes portions of east Tennessee, southwest Virginia and eastern Kentucky. Tri-racial describes populations thought to be of mixed European, African and Native American ancestry. Although there is no consensus on how many such groups exist, estimates range as high as 200. Melungeons were often referred to by other settlers as of Portugese or Native American origin.
According to the Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture, in his 1950 dissertation, cultural geographer Edward Price proposed that Melungeons were families descended from free people of color (who were likely of both European and African ancestry) and mixed-race unions between persons of African ancestry and Native Americans in colonial Virginia.
For years, varied and sometimes wild claims have been made about the origins of a group of dark-skinned Appalachian residents once known derisively as the Melungeons. Some speculated they were descended from Portuguese explorers, or perhaps from Turkish slaves or Gypsies.
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In 2011, a DNA study in the Journal of Genetic Genealogy sought to separate truth from oral tradition and wishful thinking. The study found the truth to be somewhat less exotic: Genetic evidence showed that the families historically called Melungeons are the offspring of sub-Saharan African men and white women of northern or central European origin.
And that report, which was published in April 2012 in the peer-reviewed journal, doesn’t sit comfortably with some people who claim Melungeon ancestry.
“There were a whole lot of people upset by this study,” lead researcher Roberta Estes said. “They just knew they were Portuguese, or Native American.”
Claims of Portuguese ancestry likely were a ruse they used in order to remain free and retain other privileges that came with being considered white, according to the study’s authors.
The study quotes from an 1874 court case in Tennessee in which a Melungeon woman’s inheritance was challenged. If Martha Simmerman were found to have African blood, she would lose the inheritance.
Her attorney, Lewis Shepherd, argued successfully that the Simmerman’s family was descended from ancient Phoenicians who eventually migrated to Portugal and then to North America.
Writing about his argument in a memoir published years later, Shepherd stated, “Our Southern high-bred people will never tolerate on equal terms any person who is even remotely tainted with negro blood, but they do not make the same objection to other brown or dark-skinned people, like the Spanish, the Cubans, the Italians, etc.”
In another lawsuit in 1855, Jacob Perkins, who is described as “an East Tennessean of a Melungeon family,” sued a man who had accused him of having “negro blood.”
In a note to his attorney, Perkins wrote why he felt the accusation was damaging. Writing in the era of slavery ahead of the Civil War, Perkins noted the racial discrimination of the age: “1st the words imply that we are liable to be indicted (equals) liable to be whipped (equals) liable to be fined … ”
Later generations came to believe some of the tales their ancestors wove out of necessity.
Jack Goins, who has researched Melungeon history for about 40 years and was the driving force behind the DNA study, said his distant relatives were listed as Portuguese on an 1880 census. Yet he was taken aback when he first had his DNA tested around 2000. Swabs taken from his cheeks collected the genetic material from saliva or skin cells and the sample was sent to a laboratory for identification.
“It surprised me so much when mine came up African that I had it done again,” he said. “I had to have a second opinion. But it came back the same way. I had three done. They were all the same.”
There is substantial research claiming Abraham Lincoln as well as Elvis Presley and Ava Gardner had Melungeon heritages.
Researchers have received death threats from those who feel their names are being slurred by denying a Scots-Irish heritage.
‘It’s sometimes embarrassing to see the lengths your ancestors went to hide their African heritage, but look at the consequences’ said Wayne Winkler, past president of the Melungeon Heritage Association.
‘They suffered anyway because of the suspicion.’
Trailer from the documentary “Melungeon Voices”