dallashistory

Well. this is sorta ... gauche or icky ~ take your pick Or, maybe you think it's all cool and natural and human so, here ya go: traits to consider in some avenues of genealogical research.

http://www.rlnn.com/ArtDec06/HowMuchInd ... eally.html

There is much more along these lines available on the Web; just a little taste, here.

http://www.melungeonhealth.org/ (scroll down for teeth)

http://tinyurl.com/bz2t6a

My mother has shovel-shaped incisors. We are said to have 'Cherokee' blood along our Henderson line. And she has Lettie Durham back there, too.

I'm not sure how the statistics pan out on the use of these traits as markers. Adam, maybe you have some idea.

PS. That's my mother up there on my avatar

I have read for years about certain traits as the "shovel shaped incisors" etc
but had forgotten until now.

On a different sort of trait I find it interesting that certain teeth alignments or faults line up in some lines. Other times it is stuff like near sightedness which tends to skip a generation.

I have heard much about personality tendencies--every thing from depression prone to bi polar to a.d.d. and so on.
Of course we do know for a fact there are genetic tendencies if one has THE gene for all kinds of physical diseases and illnesses.

Of course one can only go back so far with this--limited by life or photo assumptions or oral history.

Holly, the "shovel" teeth thing has been reputed to be a trait of the American Indian for a long time, but I don't know that it has ever been proven. .......Many postings regarding this trait and the "anatolian bump" can be found on Genforum under the American Indian topic and also at the Melungeon (as a surname) forum, as well as on Ancestry.

Since Melungeons are often theorized to be tri-racial (cauc., negroid and Amerind (asian), the shovel teeth is often mentioned in postings.

Nancy Sparks Morrison, whose web site you listed, has been arguing her views on the internet forums for many years and can get quite nasty with people who present facts that don't support her positions.

Fred

Speaking of the "Melungeons" and Morrison I know we have brought them up before but Fred reminded me
--a few years ago in trying to track down my elusive "Indian" ancestor I started looking into the possible Melungeon link because there are tons with the surnames etc in my old part of NC/VA.
Back then everyone thought they were descendants of Portuguese or Spanish pirates or mixtures of slave and free. I mean you name it and there was "an origin". BUT what got me were the diatribes and comments and utter disdain for certain of the possible "blood" origins. Some folks were totally convinced that their way was the only way and were highly insulted at the "mixed" theory. If possible duels would have arisen.

I see today that the focus is mainly on the more mountainous areas of people in NC,VA and TN. and has spread into KY and LA but now we do have DNA and

an official study going on. It is interesting to see what DNA is showing.

http://www.melungeons.com/articles/melu ... roject.htm

I wonder if Melungeon will even remain a designation.

My "listed as Mulatto" fourth great grandfather led me to start looking into the Melungeons. The area where he lived in 1760s into 1780s was where some of the folks who were later known as Melungeons lived, during that same time. It has been my experience, over the last 10 years or so, that if you're really interested in research on Melungeons, you should ignore certain "so called" researchers. They are: Nancy Morrison, Brent Kennedy, Helen Campbell, Elizabeth Hirschman & Donald "Panther" Yates & anyone that is currently associated with them. Most everything that any of these folks have written is based entirely on speculation, IMHO.

A couple of people who have done some "real" research on this group are Joanne Pezzulo & Jack Goins.

For a "real" Melungeon DNA project, you need to see the "Core Melungeon DNA" project (link below). People listed here are descendants of the folks in East Tennessee - Hawkins & Hancock Counties - who were known as Melungeons in the 19th century. If you look at the Y haplogroups shown here, you won't find many, if any, American Indian, but will find a lot of sub-Saharah African (E1b1a) - what the first group I mentioned usually denies.


http://www.familytreedna.com/public/cor ... n=yresults

Thanks for supporting my view of Morrison, Ernie, and for adding the other names, such as 'Panther' Yates, that I didn't mention.

Joanne Pezzulo and I have exchanged emails several times, in discussing her involvement and research results regarding the Melungeons. The lady has a ton of information at hand that is often used to refute the suppositions of such as those you named along with Morrison.

Fred

This "discussion" has also reminded me that some of the names in the study like Goin and Sizemore have long been found in "Indian connection" research in the South BUT about any name one can find in the South will have a dual heritage from the 1860s on. Same first names and same last names. Yet even before then back in colonial times we had intermarrying and passing that was purposely overlooked and kept silent.

DNA is bringing much to light that a few will find rather upsetting and will refute no matter what.


On the other hand and in a lighter vein (no pun intended),

though we have a documented paper trail all the way back to the 1640s and beyond to the Netherlands some of our parent's generation, still living, have refused to give up their convictions that Marsalis is French and we came here in the Rev. to fight with Lafayette because mom or dad said so. One line has had a reunion for the past 3 years (after I got them all connected ) and I hear that "dad" and "granddad" and "uncle" still won't be convinced otherwise.

Back to the Melungeons;

For a couple years now I have off and on been helping some "Hooker" lines from Patrick CO, VA (predominantly) as mentioned on my Cherokee Rolls thread here.

I discovered that Sam/Samuel Hooker who moved back and forth from Patrick to neighboring Stokes married a Mary Gibson born about 1767 probably in Stokes/Surry CO, NC.

I discovered from the Rolls the surname Gibson. They were said to be from Stokes County (was part of Surry till about 1777 and Rowan before that).

On the Stokes CO free USGen site there is this link that leads one to a Melungeon gen site. Anyway I came across the Jack Goins that Ernie mentioned above
http://www.jgoins.com/emhistory.htm

THANKS!!!!!


According to what i learned (not from Jack goins but the other site) the three biggest names in the Stokes/Rockingham Counties for Melungeons were Goins, Gibson and Collins. Gibson is thought to have been Gipson at times and a community of Melungeons is believed to be settled in KY.

There are some photos at this site too.

So I started searching message Boards etc and so far it seems that most Gibsons trace their origin in the U.S back to a Thomas then a Valentine etc.
All because of a Will left in VA and documented.

I then looked at the DNA site for Gibson and sure enough they are overwhelmingly R1b1 etc.


Now all these Patrick/Stokes County Hooker descendants were convinced they were of great grandfather Indian heritage. Jack Goins says his ancestors were convinced of the "Indian".
So this takes me back to the Cherokee Rolls for something NEW to me that I just learned from another comrade in Hurst, Texas:

The site stated that Patrick Henry introduced a resolution into the VA legislature to give "English" people 50 acres and a cow to marry a Native American!! and Thomas Jefferson and others encouraged people to marry Native Americans,
I guess these first Cherokee who married the "English" ladies took the English surnames of their wives so some of us may be related to the eastern VA/NC Hookers through a female Hooker in Halifax or Bedford Co.,VA in the early 1700s???

Btw Jack Goins on his site says:

I discovered that most of the story Calloway Collins told the reporter Will Allen Dromgoole in the 1890 interview on Newman Ridge was true when he was quoted as saying, "The Collins and Gibson’s were living as Indians in Virginia before they migrated to North Carolina." The Indian tribe was not named and has not been factually proven, but the important part, moving from Virginia to North Carolina has been proven by deeds from all these areas, beginning on the Pamunkey River in Louisa County, Virginia.

Sharon wrote:

"According to what i learned (not from Jack goins but the other site) the three biggest names in the Stokes/Rockingham Counties for Melungeons were Goins, Gibson and Collins."

As near as I can tell, those three surnames were, along with Bunch & one or two others, the predominant Melungeon surnames, everywhere. Seems that a lot of these folks were in Orange/Caswell NC just before going to Hawkins TN (around 1800?).

Ernie, the more I read and the more DNA is revealed I find some of Jack Goins ideas most apt. Especially when we realize how illiterate people of the 18th Century were and how words have been anglicized and corrupted for 100s of years.

Did the 1700 Melungeon forefathers refer to themselves as Melungeons? If the answer to this question is yes, no records have been found that actually call them by the name Melungeon. Also, to my knowledge no Melungeon tribe has been documented prior to the record in Tennessee.

Was this name Melungeon coined by the local people? If the answer to this question is yes, the name would only apply to those people. According to an eye witness, Sneedville Attorney Lewis M. Jarvis born 1829, the above answer is yes when he said, “ Much has been said and written about the inhabitants of Newman Ridge and Blackwater at Hancock County, Tennessee. They have been divisively dubbed with the name “Melungeon” by the local white people who have lived here with them it is not a traditional name or tribe of Indians”. (Jarvis interview recorded in 1903 Sneedville Times.)

Another message I got from living in the land of the Melungeons is that during the early years of my life time no person in that neighborhood was actually identified as a Melungeon until after the 1947 Post story, because those people in this time period told their children, "if you don’t be quiet the Melungeons will get you." They would tell you the Melungeons lived somewhere else, or over on the next ridge, etc.

One person in this Saturday Evening Post story told me the whole Melungeon thing was a myth and laughed about it. She assured me there was no such thing as a Melungeon, but like Grandpa Goins, they also claimed to be of Indian descent. In conversations and letter from Melungeon descendants, including the Collins, Gibson and Bolin families they also claimed Indian descent.

This author discovered the word Melungin written in the 1813 Minutes of Stony Creek Church, which was from an accusation that a lady in the church was housing "them melungins." There is not enough written about this incident in this church record to actually determine anything factual, but it strongly suggest housing a Melungeon was taboo in 1813. Could this word Melungin, Melungeon be derived from the word "Malengine" which is a mean person or someone with “mischievous intent?" If this was actually the word used to describe some in this community then it would be against church belief to keep company with this type of person. (

Attorney Lewis Shepard, of Chattanooga, Tennessee "She is related to a group of people living in the mountains of East Tennessee known as "Malungeons." 1. This statement was made by attorney Lewis Shepard, describing his Melungeon client whose mother was a Bolton. Shepard presented the following argument; "The term "Melungeon" is an East Tennessee provincialism; it was coined by the people of that county to apply to these people and is derived from the word, "mélange," meaning mixture and has gotten into most modern dictionaries."

The Stony Creek Church was in (what is today) Scott County VA, just across the state line fron Hawkins & Hancock Counties TN (Hancock was formed, in part, from Hawkins, in 1850s, I believe). First use of "Melungeons" accused someone of "harboring" Melungins, not housing.

My research in East Tennessee has put me in touch with a lot of "cousins" & co-researchers (my age or older) who have lived there all of their lives. All had heard of the word & indicated that you didn't want to call anyone, especially in Hawkins, Hancock or Claiborne) by that name - if you wanted to live. Was about as obnoxious as using the N word (and had about same meaning) up until around 20 years ago, when a lot of "wannabees" started showing up. Nobody knows for sure about the origins of the word & debates still go on today on that subject. From what I've read, nobody ever (before late '70s or early '80s)called themselves "Melungeons" - it was a label used by others to describe some of the residents of the area - or most any other boogey man.

If you look at results of Jack's DNA project at FTDNA, you'll see some Collins, Gibson, Goins, & Bunches who are E1b1a, Sub Saharah African haplogroup, which could/should provide a clue about why these folks were tagged with a derogatory label.

I have read Jack Goins entire site/links and was thoroughly educated.
Unbelievable amount of really excellent research, genealogy, reviews and conclusions.


FANTASTIC!!
Thanks again for mentioning him and clue-ing me in on others, Ernie and Fred.

.

Somehow this post was lost so here goes again--the url that I have loved reading off and on for 3 days now is priceless for enlightening, educating and entertaining!

It is
http://www.geocities.com/ourmelungeons/front.html

Don't let the title mislead--it is far more than just "Melungeon" history.
The "Indian" history--names, lines, migration, historical documents etc--are invaluable. There are articles, links, sites, photos galore.