THE MOORS
Jack Goins writes that the letter to the editor by Lawrence Johnson somehow shows that everyone in the south knew all about the Melungeons except for Will Allen Dromgoole. Although she lived in Murfreesboro and her sister in law was Nancy Gibson she had never heard of them until Swan Burnett's article and the letter by Johnson in the Atlanta Journal, yet because Johnson used the term Moors he *must have* heard this by word of mouth that was started by John Sevier in 1800 but Dromgoole had never heard of them?
Are you confused yet? Well maybe Mr. Johnson said they were Moors because he grew up in South Carolina, had heard their history and he is the one that told Baird and Dromgoole they were Moors?
In 1527 when Lucas deAyllon and his 300 men, women and children arrived at the mouth of the Pee Dee River he brought with him 100 or more slaves. Does Jack Goins suppose deAyllon brought with him some English or French slaves? The Moors had a large influence in Portugual for hundreds of years and it would seem very likely at least some of these slaves with deAyllon and later deSoto were of Moorish descent.
Some of these slaves [and Portuguese adventures] were left behind in the 1500s to mix with the Native Tribes. After nine or ten generations were they still Moors and Portuguese or were they Indians? Were those English, French and Germans that mixed with the Native Tribes called Englishmen, Frenchmen etc., or where they called Indians? There is no difference and the people called Cherokee living in Oklahoma, no matter their mixture, no matter their DNA, they are called the Cherokee Indians. And to pretend that because their DNA is Sub Saharan or European or their ancestry is 'Moorish' they are NOT Indians is the most severe form of racism.. one drop rule is alive and well
THE PEE DEE RIVER FAMILIES
Jack Goins wants to rely on some hundred year plus definition from Webster to define who the Melungeons were, which seems to me utterly ridiculous. After all of the documents, research, etc., that have turned up just in the last 15 years, not including the huge DNA project we are going to define these people by one book a hundred years old?
He talks about how these Melungeon families came from Virginia and then North Carolina before Newman's Ridge but does not mention the migration of the Pee Dee River families although their surnames have been included in his CORE project. How does he explain them?
He provides no records for them but supposes the North Carolina families were there in 1790. He doesn't seem to know where the Pee Dee families were in 1780. In fact it has been recorded the families from the Pee Dee River moving south in the 1780s travelled over land to the Holston River in East Tennessee to avoid the hostile Indians.
Jordan Gibson, brother to Gideon Gibson was living at Bledsoe Lick in the early 1780s and was employed in cutting the road and escorting families from the town and of Clinch Mountain to the Cumberland Settlements.
Then Jack Goins presents us with "a good example of DNA confirming family research" by telling us that Buck Gibson's DNA matches descendants of Gideon Gibson who was called before Governor Johnson in 1735 and proven NOT to be Negroes.
Well the problem with this is no one knows what happened to this Gideon Gibson. He was granted land but according to this 1745 South Carolina record he never claimed it.
Read the Petition of John Brown, planter shewing that the Petitoner had four persons in family for whom he has not received any lands pursuant to his Majesty's Royal bounty, and as there is a tract of land containing 800 acres surveyed above 10 years ago for Gideon Gibson and at pres't a Plat thereof in the Survey'r General's Office, as appears by his certificate, and is vacant, by not being applied for in the time prescribed in the Gazette, the Pet'r herefore humbly prays that the Survey'r General be directed to Certify the said Plat for the use of the Petitoner, and in his name that it may be granted him accordingly. To which was annexed a certificate by George Hunter... that 200 acres of land was surveyed on the NE side of the Pedee River for Gideon Gibson on the 13th day of April 1736 in pursuant of a Warrant from Gov'r Johnson, dated March 6th, 1733, and that a Plat thereof was returned into the Survery'r General's Office on the 18th day of June 1736 which has laid there ever since without any application made for y'e same tho advertized in the Gazette, August 5th 1743... the prayer was granted...
So Gideon Gibson never claimed that land and many researchers have confused him with Gideon Gibson the Regulator of Marrs Bluff. The Gideon who married Mary, daughter of William Brown, by 1728 and was granted this land can NOT be the same Gideon of Marrs Bluff whose wife was Martha.
This Gideon born about 1720, is undoubtedly the brother of Jordan Gibson who died in South Carolina in 1799 and is not the brother of Jordan who went to Tennessee.
Gideon, the Regulator, and ancestor of General Randall Lee Gibson who PBS has given the title of 'Randall Gibson and his black father' descends from John Gibson and Elizabeth Wilcox of Middlesex Co., Virginia, not the Gideon Gibson examined by Governor Johnson.
And while all of these Gibson descendants may have DNA that matches their DNA is not Sub Saharan but European and neither the DNA, nor their records, can prove their race or ethnicity.
MORE DNA
Goins then drops a bombshell-- if your family was listed on census records as white the only way you can be sure they were 'tri-racial' is a male Y-DNA test.
Ok. So Vardy Collins and Buck Gibson have European DNA - they were marked Mulatto on the census, so that means they were NOT tri-racial but white men? [SMH] The DNA of ONE of your ancestors out of a couple thousand can NOT determine the race or ethnicity of those ancestors who came before you. It is impossible.
Jack Goins wants you to believe ''some researchers have been led down the wrong path by accepting early authors definition and location of the Melungeons'' yet on the other hand he uses these 'early authors' -Jarvis, Dromgoole, etc., in order to build his case. You can believe 'Jack's authors' because he has given them his stamp of approval. He doesn't say why one should be believed over the other, I guess he just likes what they said.
PARSON BROWNLOW
Now he covers Brownlow. He says Brownlow was the first to use the term Melungeon as a political slur, and he was. What Jack Goins doesn't tell you is this 'political enemy' was from Washington D.C., not Tennessee.
Then just a few years later Brownlow wrote that Frederick Ross, his 'Religious enemy,' was a Melungeon. Ross was the son of David Ross of Richmond, Virginia, who supposedly took one of his 'slaves' for a wife and ironically one of his 'slaves' was one Thomas Gibson who won his freedom from David Ross by proving to the court he descended from the Indian woman named Jane Gibson of Charles City County.
J.H. Newman
Will Allen Dromgoole went to Newmans Ridge in 1890 and wrote about the Melungeons. On page 5 of Jack Goins books he recites the story of the ridge people who created a jingle about poor Ms Dromgoole, dubbing her, Will Allen Damfool. Apparently it was not good to write about the Melungeons, actually it probably still isn't today.
A few weeks after Dromgoole's articles appeared in print one W.D.P of Rogersville wrote to the editor of the Knoxville Journal giving his history of the Melungeons. No name. In 1891 W.H. of Sneedville wrote to the New York Sun with his version of their history. No Name. One Newton Otis, supposedly from Owensboro, Ky., also wrote to the newspaper in 1900 but the only two Newton Otis' on the 1900 census are from Iowa and Minnesota. All the way up to 1928 we find these unsigned or mysterious people giving interviews to newspapers. I don't think it means they made it up, it just means they didn't want to be called a 'dam fool.' Still today we find reputable people using 'fake names' on message boards rather than divulging their true identities.
February 2, 1928 Patton Gibson of Hancock County, Tennessee wrote to the Knoxville News with his knowledge of the Melungeon people. He tells their history of the move from near Camden, South Carolina to East Tennessee. Apparently he was not afraid to give his name or his birthplace, perhaps he knew he was dying. Within 3 weeks he was being treated for tuberculosis and died a few months later;
Knoxville News-Sentinel
February 2, 1928
The Melungeons of East Tennessee are not a mixed race. They are descendants of some ancient Phoenicians who removed from Carthage to a place near Camden, South Carolina and from there to Hancock County, Tennessee. This is the same people as Hiram of Tyre who wrote letters to King Solomon and helped to build the great Jewish temple.
They have no facial resemblance to Indians or Negroes. They have none of the characteristics of either negroes or Indians. The fact is there is no negroid or Indian blood, but a pure distinct race.
J. Patton Gibson
(Hancock County, Tennessee)
Now why wouldn't Patton Gibson, born and raised in Hancock County say the Melungeons originally came from South Carolina? Surely he must have known the Gibsons came from Louisa County, Virginia?
Perhaps J. H. Newman was an alias, perhaps Jack's friend just couldn't find him on the census, but there certainly were Newmans on the Ridge ... and in fact they were living with Jacks's Minor and Sizemore family. Joseph, [born 1893 - was his father J.H Newman?] Bart, Elsie, Maggie and Joe Jr. Newman, nieces and nephews of Simpson Minor, are in his household in Hawkins County, 1920.
There was also a Professor J. H. Newman of Maryville College in Blount County. Perhaps he is our J. H. Newman but whoever gave the interview he was either there or read the transcripts, he could not have made up a story that would match the records found a hundred years later.
And lastly Jack Goins writes;
The Newman Ridge Melungeons were the source of other colonies in Davidson, Morgan, Rhea, Hamilton in Tennessee and Lecture and Knott Counties, Kentucky, but the people who migrated there did not retained the name some of their neighbors may have called them Melungeon after learning where they came from. A good example is the Goins family in Hamilton County, Tennessee “We generally called them Melungeons when we talk about the Goins and them-the Goins that were mixed blooded.”(Testimony in the Shepherd Trial) The problem with all these mysterious Melungeon settlements is a lack of named Melungeons and pinpoint location. They do not have a history of other witnesses, or names of Melungeons such as described by Lewis Jarvis. Usually one person wrote an article about some phantom group of unnamed Melungeons, but that group has no historical existence beyond these named events.
Judge Lewis Shepherd in giving the history of the Melungeon families, his clients, the Boltons, [and Shoemake, Perkins, Goins, etc.] said they lived in South Carolina near the North Carolina line and they left South Carolina and came over the mountains to East Tennessee where they were given the name Melungeons. Shepherd does say that most of Hancock County people are Melungeons or allied to them in some way but his entire article is written about his CLIENTS the Portuguese Melungeons of Hamilton County, Tennessee.
They were called Melungeons as proven by testimony, in the 1850s as were the Portuguese settlement at Lebanon, at the same time or earlier than the Hancock County families.
Jack Goins can continue to try to spin this to fit his migration and 'Hancock County only' theories but he knows these records are a problem. He claims the "problem" with the other settlements is a lack of 'named Melungeons and pinpoint location' but they are NAMED and their location is PINPOINTED in both the Hamilton and Wilson County settlements and Jack Goins knows this IS A PROBLEM.
In his own words;
In a message sent to me dated 9/22/2005 11:32:36 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, jgoins@usit.net writes:
"This court case has changed my view on the originator of the word Melungeons as beginning on Newman Ridge as per Jarvis. This testimony in SC and 1874, before Dromgoole and appears from this case the word Melungeon may have been widely known during this period. Jack"
In a message dated 10/2/2005 9:43:35 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, jgoins@usit.net writes:
"All of this aside I believe this case changes some of our arguments, such as they were not called or known as Melungeons in other places where they migrated. In fact it may yet show they were called Melugeons in SC. .......
......That 1848 reporter was not a neighbor. No doubt he came here because he was told this was where the Melungeons lived. What I am saying is this; In Hamilton County a Justice of the Peace, said they were called Malungeon. If they were from Hawkins/Hancock this means they did retain the name Melungeon, or Malungeon. This being a sworn under oath court record makes it much more reliable record , In fact there was two witnesses who said they were called Malungeon. If they were given this name by their neighbors who lived here among them, then why haven't we found this?
Dromgoole came to Hancock probably because some old senator in Nashville told her to, but we have a problem, We don't have one witness like say that Justice of the Peace who lived in this area before Dromgoole who testified the Collins or Gibson, or Goins were Malungeons. The problem is the Bolton trial survived and the Voting trial proceedings did not, or have not yet been found. Penny don't think this is a problem but I do."
From: JoannePezzullo@aol.com
Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2005 20:06:25 EDT
To: jgoins@usit.net, pennyferguson@alltel.net
I'm with Penny I don't see the problem........I don't understand why you think it is a problem? Shepherd says they left South Carolina and went to HANCOCK COUNTY first...and spread out from there.
In a message dated 10/29/2005 8:49:08 P.M. Eastern Standard Time, jgoins@usit.net writes:
The bottom line is we have no neighbor in Hancock pointing to any family and saying they are called Malungeon. I cannot believe in the heart of Malungeon county we cannot even find the word in a court record. and Yes it is a problem
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Bottom line -- I'll let the reader decide. My blog is not about theories, I have no family from Newman's Ridge, I have no ancestors marked mulatto on the
census, my DNA is not African. I have nothing to prove, nothing to hide.
Occam's Razor; " the simplest explanation is usually the correct one." The Melungeons said they were Portuguese Indians and almost every article written since 1848 on the Melungeons describes them as Portuguese Indians.
The Portuguese were found on the Pee Dee River region mixing with the Indians as early as 1527 and there are numerous court cases of these people on the Pee Dee River with testimony they were Portuguese. Historians, ethnologist, antrhopologists, members of the Smithsonian in the 1890 were all convinced the Melungeons were part of the Lumbee and Redbones and they were Portuguese mixed with Indians. All of these records can be found on this blog or at this website; The Melungeon Indians
May the truth prevail above all else ~Joanne Pezzullo
