TABLE OF CONTENTS
TRI-RACIAL
Laws, Issues & Opinions
black
indian
white
white/black
indian/white/black
indian/black
indian/white
My ancestors, both paternal and maternal, are listed on all available census' at one time or another as 1) White or 2) Mulatto and 3) Mulatto and later as White. I have not found any designations on any census that any of my direct ancestors are enumerated as Black; tho one or a few are listed as F.N., a designation for "Free Negro," NOT "Freed Negro."
My ancestor surnames that are have 'mulatto' as a designation at times on the census' are: Bramham/Brannon (maternal), Croston (paternal), Dorton/Dalton (paternal), Napper (maternal), and Pritchard (paternal).
It is up to each individual descendant or relative of mine to determine for themselves which race they wish to be considered if that is important to them.
It was each individual census taker's decision to specify which classification to use -- "M" or "W" or "B" and not until 1860 "I" [for Indian] -- based upon what they were told by the person(s) ennumerated or what the census taker determined was their race. We can't know which method they used. There were even court cases to determine race and there are records of some of my ancestors proving their race for one reason or another. I don't believe that this information is totally reliable either and can be used as a determinant.
I am not of the same opinion as the racist, Plecker, that "“there are no descendants of Virginia Indians claiming or reputed to be Indians who are unmixed with Negro blood.” [I do believe there are some full-blood Indians.] As a result of his work, it was determined that "any person claiming to be Indian by heritage is to be classified as Negro or colored."
It is my opinion that it is impossible to determine if the races in the years we have census' for (1782-1930) -- and in particular, my ancestors -- have mixed-blood in any determinable percentage. I can only be pleased that there was some racial designation in the census' to show my racial background. There are DNA studies being conducted at present.
There is much speculation that many of my ancestors have Indian blood. Some have proven it to their satisfaction. As there is 'mulatto' designation throughout the census' and 'mulatto' can include any race at that time, I will assume that I cannot exclude the fact that there is Indian in my heritage.
What mixture of race 'mulatto' was the designation for in each and every person on the census', only God knows.
Unfortunately, too many historians have interpreted that "free persons of color" column on the census return to be equivalent to "free blacks," when in fact it enumerated many more persons of different racial stocks. Among the free colored persons where the resident acculturated Indian population, generally classified as mulattos, who frequently had no African ancestry.
Thus that first great racial division of America lumped all the free nonwhites into a single category from which only the most dogged research can unscramble them.
Although it today is taken to mean mixed black and white, the word "mulatto" in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries generally applied to anyone with dark skin who was not a Negro.
The Oxford English Dictionary cites an example from 1709 in which a person was both a mulatto and an Indian.
Virginia described Indians' children by white partners as mulattos in a 1705 law that also identified white/African mixtures as mulattos. While African-descended persons were always mulattos (the "one drop" rule), a person with three European and one Indian grandparent was not a mulatto. A similar rule was followed in Maryland.
One of the earliest
Indians in the Middle Atlantic region who was known to join the
European economy was Ned Gunstocker of Virginia, who patented 150
acres on the Rappahannock by virtue of transportation of three
European settlers into Virginia. In 1699, a Virginia
court confirmed that an Indian living outside a tribal reserve
could in fact own property under the English system of land
tenure (Rountree 1990:136). Other Indians made the move from the native
society to the European system, but their activities are not so
well documented as Gunstocker's.
In 1747 and 1792, individuals named William Bass obtained certificates from Virginia courts to the effect that they were descended from whites and Indians, and not from Negroes (Rountree 1990: 160).
http://www.mitsawokett.com/HeiteReport1.htm
Miscegenation: 1. The interbreeding of different races or of persons of different racial backgrounds. 2. Cohabitation, sexual relations, or marriage involving persons of different races.
Genocide: systematic killing of a racial or cultural group [syn:race murder, race extermination]
Genocide: in international law, the intentional and systematic destruction, wholly or in part, by a government of a national, racial, religious, or ethnic group. Although the term genocide was first coined in 1944, the crime itself has been committed often in history. It was initially used to describe the systematic campaign for the extermination of peoples carried on by Nazi Germany, in its attempts in the 1930s and 40s to destroy the entire European Jewish community, and to eliminate other national groups in Eastern Europe.
HEINEGG SITE
Free African Americans of North Carolina and Virginia by Paul
Heinegg
http://www.genealogy.com/genealogy/12_heing.html?Welcome=993927824
PLECKER
LETTERS
Head of the
state Bureau of Vital Statistics from 1912
to 1946, who vigorously sought to deny the Indians' existence
on grounds they were black.
DELAWARE'S INVISIBLE INDIANS
http://www.heite.org/Indians/invisibleindians.html
MELUNGEON - Roots Archives re designations of race
Racial Laws - Virginia and Maryland
PERKINS TRIAL
Instructions to the Jury - http://jctcuzins.com/pam/perkins/jury.htm
Trial Notes - http://jctcuzins.com/pam/perkins/notes.htm
Article regarding Indians and their
designations
............in Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania & Virginia
http://www.mitsawokett.com/HeiteReport1.htm
Many of Jack Goins' writings
mention the Gibson family.
JACK GOINS - Author, "Melungeons: and Other Pioneer
Families"
http://www.fialcowitz.com/Bunch/other9.html
JACK GOINS
Definition of the Melungeons
http://www.geocities.com/ourmelungeons/jgdef.html
JACK GOINS - Author "History
of the Melungeons
http://www.geocities.com/ourmelungeons/history.html
JACK GOINS - Author "Examining
Melungeon History and Genealogy"
http://www.melungeons.com/articles/melungeon_history_and_genealogy.htm
JACK GOINS - Author "OLD THOMAS COLLINS OF
FLATT RIVER"
..............also mentioning my Gibson family
http://www.angelfire.com/wv2/dillon1944/old_thomas_collins_of_flatt_river.htm
V. E. DeMARCE, Ph.D. Review Essay
of
[Virginia
DeMarce, Bureau of Indian Affairs]
"The Melungeons: The Resurrection of a Proud People. An
Untold Store of Ethnic Cleansing in America" By N. Brent
Kennedy, with Robyn Vaughan Kennedy
http://www.dashlink.com/~gmxwater/demarce1.html
http://www.dashlink.com/~gmxwater/demarce2.html
http://www.dashlink.com/~gmxwater/demarce3.html
A GEOGRAPHIC
ANALYSIS OF WHITE-NEGRO-INDIAN RACIAL MIXTURES
IN EASTERN UNITED STATES by Edward T. Price
http://students.etsu.edu/zpdc5/Melungeon%20Heritage.htm
..........
Includes information about West Virginia Guineas
WEST VIRGINIA "GUINEAS" and
LUMBEE INDIANS
From "The Melungeons" by Bonnie Ball
ISBN 0-932807-74-7
The Overmountain Press, Johnson City, Tennessee
WEST VIRGINIA GUINEAS
Going Yander”:
The West Virginia Guineas’ View of Ohio.
Volume 2, #2 - April June 1976 Author:Barry J. Ward,
“WV University professor explores the folklore about,
status, and migratory patterns of a tri-racial community.”
It was presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Folklore
Society in New Orleans, October 1975.
THE GUINEAS OF WEST VIRGINIA.
IMPRINT 1952.
AUTHOR BURNELL, JOHN PHILLIPS.
Ohio State University, Columbus, M.A. Thesis.
OCLC # zos4ug b3119073. ISN/STD # 0653346.
EAST INDIAN SLAVES IN COLONIAL
AMERICA: AN UNTOLD FACET OF AMERICAN HISTORY
By Francis C. Assisi
http://www.asianamerican.net/article10.html
JACK D. FORBES, AUTHOR
http://cougar.ucdavis.edu/nas/faculty/forbes/books.html
"AFRICANS AND NATIVE
AMERICANS (1993, Illinois) ISBN 0-252-06321-X
The term "mulatto" had a
somewhat different meaning in the 1700s; rather than defining
simply a black-white mixture, the term was used to classify a
wide variety of mixed-blood peoples, so the Bunches and others
could easily have been mixed-blood Indians and not Africans"
http://www.ibiblio.org/dig/html/split/report47b.html
"BLACK AFRICANS AND NATIVE AMERICANS" (1988,
Basil Blackwell, Inc., New York)
Discover Magazine DNA study
http://discover.com/may_03/featfrom.html
DNA & NATIVE AMERICAN ORIGNS
http://www.chattanooga.net/cita/mtdna.html
My ancestors, both paternal and maternal, are listed on all available census' at one time or another as 1) White or 2) Mulatto and 3) Mulatto and later as White. I have not found any designations on any census that any of my direct ancestors are enumerated as Black.
My ancestor surnames that are have 'mulatto' as a designation at times on the census' are: Bramham/Brannon (maternal), Croston (paternal), Dorton/Dalton (paternal), Napper (maternal), and Pritchard (paternal).
It is up to each individual descendant or relative of mine to determine for themselves which race they wish to be considered if that is important to them.
It was each individual census taker's decision to specify which classification to use -- "M" or "W" or "B" and not until 1860 "I" [for Indian] -- based upon what they were told by the person(s) ennumerated or what the census taker determined was their race. We can't know which method they used. There were even court cases to determine race and there are records of some of my ancestors proving their race for one reason or another. I don't believe that this information is totally reliable either and can be used as a determinant.
I am not of the same opinion as the racist, Plecker, that "“there are no descendants of Virginia Indians claiming or reputed to be Indians who are unmixed with Negro blood.” [I do believe there are some full-blood Indians.] As a result of his work, it was determined that "any person claiming to be Indian by heritage is to be classified as Negro or colored."
It is my opinion that it is impossible to determine if the races in the years we have census' for (1782-1930) -- and in particular, my ancestors -- have mixed-blood in any determinable percentage. I can only be pleased that there was some racial designation in the census' to show my racial background. There are DNA studies being conducted at present.
There is much speculation that many of my ancestors have Indian blood. Some have proven it to their satisfaction. As there is 'mulatto' designation throughout the census' and 'mulatto' can include any race at that time, I will assume that I cannot exclude the fact that there is Indian in my heritage.
What mixture of race 'mulatto' was the designation for in each and every person on the census', only God knows.
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4-5-2003 |