MELUNGEONS

ORIGINS

A common belief about the Melungeons of east Tennessee is that they are an indigenous people of Appalachia, existing there before the arrival of the first white settlers. However, genealogists working in the late 20th century have documented, through a range of tax, court, census and other records, that the ancestors of the Melungeons followed the same migration paths into the region from Virginia and Kentucky as their English, Scots-Irish, and German neighbors.

The likely background to the mixed-race families later to be called "Melungeons" was the emergence in the Chesapeake Bay region in the 17th century of what historian Ira Berlin (1998) calls "Atlantic Creoles." These were freed slaves and indentured servants of European, West African, and Native American ancestry (and not just North American, but also Caribbean, Central and South American Indian: see Forbes (1993)). Some of these "Atlantic Creoles" were culturally what today might be called "Hispanic" or "Latino", bearing names such as "Chavez," "Rodriguez," and "Francisco." Many of them intermarried with their English neighbors, adopted English surnames, and even owned slaves. Early Colonial America was very much a "melting pot" of peoples, but not all of these early multiracial families were necessarily ancestral to the later Melungeons.

"The historical and anthropological evidence ... suggests that in general a significant portion (though not necessarily all) of the ancestry of the Magoffin County, Kentucky, and Highland County, Ohio, enclaves originated principally from an admixture of African Americans and Whites in the early colonial period (from the late 1600's until about 1800) and secondarily from an admixture with presently unknown Native American groups in the mid-Atlantic coast region."

Historian Dr. Virginia E. DeMarce and genealogist Paul Heinegg, as well as Melungeon descendant Jack Goins, have traced the "core" Gibson and Collins families back to Louisa County, Virginia in the early 1700s. Those families were of mixed European and African, and possibly also of Native American, heritage, and were identified as "mulattos" and "blacks" in subsequent records, according to the classifications of the times. The Gibson family can be traced back even further to Charles City County, Virginia in the late 1600s.

According to genealogist Paul Heinegg, the Gibson family probably derived from Elizabeth Chavis and her partner, whose descendants were called "mulattos" and "negros." The Chavis family was an early and large mixed-race family in several Eastern Virginia and North Carolina counties. Today, Chavis and its variants is one of the most widespread of the surnames associated with "tri-racial isolate" groups in the Eastern U.S., though it is not a typical Melungeon surname. Some researchers believe the surname was originally Chavez, but in the 1940s Brewton Berry claimed it was derived from Chavers or Shavers.

Those families migrated in the first half of the 18th century from Virginia to North and South Carolina. The Collins, Gibson, and Ridley (Riddle) families owned land adjacent to one another in Orange County, North Carolina, where they and the Bunch family were "free Molatas (mulattos)" taxable on "Black" tithes in 1755. By settling in frontier areas, free people of color found more amenable living conditions and could escape some of the racial strictures of plantation areas.

Beginning about 1767, the ancestors of the Melungeons moved northwest to the New River area of Virginia, where they are listed on tax lists of Montgomery County, Virginia, in the 1780s.From there they migrated south in the Appalachian Range to Wilkes County, North Carolina, where they are listed as "white" on the 1790 census. They resided in a part of that county which became Ashe County, where they are designated as "other free" in 1800

Not long after, Melungeon Collins and Gibson families were members of Stony Creek Primitive Baptist Church in nearby Scott County, Virginia, where they appear to have been treated as social equals of the white members. The earliest documented use of the term "Melungeon" is found in the minutes of this church.

From Virginia and North Carolina the families crossed into Kentucky and Tennessee. The earliest known Melungeon in Northeast Tennessee was Millington Collins, who executed a deed in Hawkins County in 1802.

Several Collins and Gibson households appear in Floyd County, Kentucky, in 1820, when they are listed as "free persons of color". On the 1830 censuses of Hawkins and Grainger County, Tennessee, Melungeon families are listed as "free-colored." Melungeons were residents of the part of Hawkins that became Hancock County in 1844.

Although ancestors of Melungeons migrated alongside the early European settlers of Appalachia, contemporary accounts documented that by appearance they were considered to be mixed race. During the the 18th and early 19th centuries, census enumerators designated them as "mulatto," "other free," or as "free persons of color." Sometimes they were listed as "white," sometimes as "black" or "negro", but almost never as "Indian." One family described as "Indian" was the Melungeon-related Ridley family, listed as such on a 1767 Pittsylvania County, Virginia, tax list, though they had been designated "mulattos" in 1755. During the 19th century, the Melungeon families begin to be classified as white on census records with increasing frequency, a trend that has continued to the present. As recently as 1935, however, some members were described as "mulattoes" with "straight hair."

Kennedy (1994) characterizes the gradual change of classification of Melungeons from a "mulatto" to a "white" population as an "ethnic cleansing." However, the historical evidence documents that these families facilitated their own assimilation through voluntary intermarriage with whites, leading to an increasingly lighter appearance among descendants.

A second important factor in the shift from "mulatto" to "white" was the often imprecise and ambiguous definitions of the racial categories "mulatto" and "free person of color." In the British North American colonies and the United States at various times in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries "mulatto" could mean a mixture of African and European, African and Native American, European and Native American, or all three, as documented by historian Jack D. Forbes (1993). That loose terminology could sometimes lead to wholesale reclassifications of indigenous peoples, as in the case of the Indians of Delaware.

The families known as "Melungeons" in the 19th century were generally well integrated into the communities in which they lived, though this is not to say that racism was never a factor in their social interactions. However, records show that on the whole they enjoyed the same rights as whites. For example, they held property, voted, and served in the Army; some, such as the Gibsons, had even owned slaves in the 18th century.

On the other hand, several Melungeon men were tried in Hawkins County, Tennessee, in 1846 for "illegal voting." They were acquitted, presumably by demonstrating to the court's satisfaction that they had no African ancestry. Melungeon ancestry was questioned again in an 1872 trial in Hamilton County, Tennessee. This case questioned the legitimacy of a marriage between a white man and a Melungeon woman. Once again a court decided that the Melungeons were not of African ancestry.

Modern anthropological and sociological studies of Melungeon descendants in Appalachia have demonstrated that they are culturally indistinguishable from their "non-Melungeon" white neighbors, sharing their Baptist religious affiliation and other features. The descendants of the early Melungeon pioneer families are not confined to Appalachia, however[citation needed]. Today, many people throughout the United States can claim this ancestry. Notable Melungeons include U-2 pilot Gary Powers.

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