RHEA-L Archives

From: <>
Subject: [RHEA-L] Melungeons- Part 2
Date: Sun, 9 Aug 1998 23:55:25 EDT

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. Again, from the Official Voice of the Second Union Planning
Committee
comes the answer to this question. 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.”

From the same source we find that “new evidence or rather old evidences re-
examined
without prejudice, 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.”

If you believe the Bering Strait migration of the Native American Indians and
you
consider that most sixteenth century Turkish sailors were of central Asian
heritage, thus
making them literal cousins to the Native Americans they would have
encountered, you
will see that they would have had little trouble fitting in. There is more
evidence of
Karachi, and Kavkaz Turkish, and Armenian, textile workers, artisans and
servants who
were brought in by both the English and Spanish into sixteenth century
Virginia and other
areas.This seems to lend support to previous claims of Melungeons to be of
Turkish
origin. These people survived by blending into the surrounding groups of
peoples. Over
time, they were put in to one of four permissable, inflexible and artificial
racial categories:
White (northern European), black (African), Indian, or mulatto, a mix of any
of the first
three.

By the time that the first U.S. census was conducted, there had been 200
years of
admixture and cultural fusing. 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 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, born and bred, 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.

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