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Fear of slave revolts and increasing racial bias among whites after 1800 led to new limits on social and economic opportunity for anyone with African heritage. A claim to being "Portuguese" could create sufficient ambiguity for people to be classified as white, so long as a neighbor did not contest the claim in court in order to gain some advantage. For example, some people classified as "free people of color" in the 1830 Census in northeastern Tenneseee were categorized as "white" in the 1840 Census. No matter the complexion, all Melungeons are mixed race people and come from multiracial backgrounds. It is because of this fact that we should all be allies to important movements like Black Lives Matter, and be understanding and compassionate of racial issues that continue to persist today.
Researchers discuss origins of Melungeon heritage at annual event
There were exceptions; despite a few squabbles over whether Melungeons and whites should attend the same schools, most Melungeons were considered white. Legal acceptance is one thing, however; social acceptance is quite another. Even where tri-racials were considered black, the local customs and mores often differentiated between the two groups, granting the tri-racials a marginally higher status than blacks — but certainly lower than that of whites. Legend and folklore place the Melungeons in the Hancock County area prior to the arrival of the white settlers. The best evidence, however, indicates the first Melungeon families arrived in the region at about the same time as the first whites. As in most other aspects of Melungeon history, myth competes with documented fact for popular attention.
Genealogy and Genetic Studies
Some have speculated on connections with the Lumbee Indians in Robeson County or the Lost Colonists of the Outer Banks. One of the most fascinating genealogy stories to surface in the last decades is the enigmatic story of the Melungeons. Sometimes called the “Lost Tribe of Appalachia,” the Melungeons are people of mixed ethnicity who claim varying degrees of Portuguese, Turkish, Moorish, Arabic, Jewish, American Indian and African descent.
Do Melungeon People Have Red Hair?
It's only natural to wonder, then, if DNA analysis can help unravel a mystery like that of the Melungeons. Yet so far, genetic information about them is as partial and complicated as many of the legends. Some clues to their origins may reside in a cluster of physical traits said to recur in the group's families. Arwin Smallwood, a speaker, started researching the topic after looking at his own family. "Growing up with people that are obviously mixed, green eyes, blue eyes, grey eyes, red and auburn hair, clearly various shades of color from very fair to very dark. So I was just very curious about my own family," Smallwood says.
"It's not strictly one group. You know, a European or a European immigrant group, but all of these cultures came together and they were blended," he says. For Winkler and others of mixed-ethnic groups, attending the 18th annual Melungeon Union on Saturday was a way to get some answers. "I had never heard the word, so I asked my relatives what a Melungeon is. I asked what it was, and I've spent all this time since then trying to answer the question," Winkler says. As they understand more about the procedure and about what the test can show and what it doesn't show, they understand that it's the beginning of some real scientific research. And I think, as the technology improves, we're going to be able to find a lot more, so I think, for a lot of people, this is just the beginning of what we're going to be able to learn about the Melungeons.
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After America’s early Melungeon families began moving inland from the coastal areas, they practiced endogamy for many generations — with presumably only a few leaving their family settlements to make lives elsewhere. Melungeon families traveled together, settled together and mostly married within their own communities. During the height of the South’s slavery era and the Trail of Tears forced relocations of the region’s indigenous people, some Melungeon families integrated with the resulting diaspora. In the 1900s, researchers discovered that there seemed to be many descendants of what was known as the Melungeon people. However, once researchers started to dig deeper into this line of people, they discovered that their roots may go back as far as the 1500s.
Although they found that the older people got, the less pronounced the illusion was, even the oldest subjects still succumbed to it. Nearly everyone who has written about the Melungeons agrees that they fiercely resented the name. [Nearly all the tri-racial groups resented the names the were called by their white neighbors.] Even in the mid-20th century, to call a Hancock Countian a Melungeon was to insult him. The stigma attached to the name “Melungeon” leads most — but not all — researchers to the conclusion that the name was imposed upon the people, that it was not a name they ever used for themselves. Other researchers have speculated that “Melungeon” derives from the Turkish melun can, (meaning “cursed soul”), the Italianmelongena (“eggplant,” referring to one with dark skin), or the old English term “malengin” (“guile; deceit”).
Can Melungeons have Red hair?
Still others theorize that the Melungeons are merely a tri-racial mix of Caucasian Europeans, escaped African-American slaves and American Indians. Traditionally, the Melungeons have been described as having a variety of hair colors, but red hair has often been one of the most notable and remarked upon features. This is because red hair stands out due to its rarity; only 1-2% of the human population possesses natural red hair. In Melungeon communities, the prominence of red hair is seen as a symbol of their rich and diverse heritage, which includes European, African, and Native American ancestries.
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Firstly, Who Are The Melungeon People?
The Stony Creek Baptist Church records include several people with Melungeon surnames who joined the church between 1801 and 1804. These church minutes provide the first written record of the word “Melungeon” in 1813. Other Melungeon communities formed in the southeastern Tennessee counties of Hamilton and Rhea, in middle Tennessee, in eastern Kentucky, and even as far north as Highland County, Ohio. The study does not rule out the possibility of other races or ethnicities forming part of the Melungeon heritage, but none were detected among the 69 male lines and 8 female lines that were tested. Also, the study did not look for later racial mixing that might have occurred, for instance with Native Americans.
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.
Into the 1960's, Virginia's government agencies, private businesses, and social organizations legally discriminated on the basis of race. The people who ended up being labeled "Melungeons" moved west from early Hanover County and Louisa County in the 1720's, ultimately crossing the Blue Ridge into the New River Valley of Tennessee and Virginia. As more settlers moved south along the Wilderness Road, the Melungeons moved further south. As English settlers crossed the Blue Ridge to occupy Tennessee after the American Revolution, the Melungeons were squeezed out of the fertile valley bottomlands with limestone soils.
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Exactly where Melungeon identity ends and Appalachian identity begins is uncertain. Davis suggests that maybe being Melungeon is just a state of mind. “You can’t pin down a definite definition for Melungeons,” says Tucker Davis, a freelance journalist and self-identified Melungeon from Buchanan County, Va. He recalls a youth spent exploring his rural mountain community of Grundy, where everyone had a different story about what it was to be Melungeon.
Then came artifacts and written records to bring the past into sharper focus. Now, of course, there's nature's digital record, DNA, which promises to teach us simultaneously about human history, the forces of evolution, and ourselves. Some people may bristle at the idea that they are not entirely in charge of their own destiny, but many—at least by midlife—come to suspect that they are not. How do we conceive of where or, rather, from whom we come, be they Melungeon or something that is easier to explain? Often, our sense of our ancestors is of a vague mass of nameless, disembodied people. We see their traces imprinted on our faces and catalog their nationalities when asked our backgrounds.
While the Melungeon DNA project certainly proves that the Melungeon people were a multiracial ethnic group it fails to account for the many other people who are descended from Melungeon ancestry but remain ignorant to their history. With greater testing and advances in DNA research a broader conclusion will be established in understanding some of the missing links in the Melungeon people’s genetic history. Another theory argues that the Melungeons are neither Native American nor African American but the descendants of shipwrecked Portuguese sailors who began living in the Appalachian Mountains.
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