Gibsons Documented

"Rosalie Gibson' writes;

"I have a FB page Gibsons of Old Jamestown and Louisa Co, VA. It's well documented and if you read the posts from the start, you will be clear on our origins, which are truly amazing. Henry Collins and Thomas Gibson arrived in Jamestown in 1608 and I have the family documented back to the 1640's, Jamestown area, and we were largely Indian by that early, early time."

Fact:

• Thomas Gibson arrived in Jamestown in 1608 and disappears into oblivion. He went to build a home for Powahatan after arriving, it is the last we hear of Thomas Gibson.
• In 1640 Jane Gibson was born and was identified as an "Indian woman" in court records. It is documented in those court records she had a daughter, Jane who married Morris Evans, and a son George Gibson who died without heirs. How anyone can write this Jane Gibson is documented to Thomas Gibson or to Gibby Gibson is beyond my comprehension.

We do know that in 1791 Robert Wills made a deposition; 

"he was well acquainted with Jane Gibson and George Gibson her brother who were dark mulattoes who lived in the County of Charles City and were free people; that the said Jane Gibson had two children named Jane and George Gibson and they were also free"

Later on in deposition Robert Wills testifies;

Quest. Will you please to answer the second question in this deposition more fully, you have in your answer to that question said nothing about George Gibson the elder?
Ans: I never mentioned more than one George Gibson, the Son of the elder Jane Gibson, brother to Jane Evans. [This George would be born about 1660-1670 - he can't be the George of 1656 records in CCC] If it be so expressed in my former deposition it was misconceived, I never did know any but one of that name. And further this deponent saith not.

Jane Gibson, the elder, may or may not have had a brother George Gibson. It seems clear she had a son George, who died without heirs according to the pedigree sheet, but it appears she did not have a brother named George. 

Sometime in the mid 1650s to mid 1660s living on Upper Chippoakes Creek was George Gibson and wife Mary, called Goodwife Gibson. That is the first documented Gibson we have in the area since Thomas Gibson's arrival in 1608. Fifty years have went by. We do not know what happened to the first Thomas Gibson, did he go back to England? Was he killed by Indians?  He is not on the 'Living and Dead' census of 1623. Did he marry into the Powhatan tribe and is the father of Jane and/or George of Charles City County?

court

Calloway Collins

This sketch of Calloway Collins, grandson of "A FULL-BLOODED CHEROKEE" accompanied the article by Will Allen Dromgoole on her trip to Newmans Ridge.  See scan below.

This sketch is found in Wikipedia article on the Melungeons.  Who sketched this and who added it to Wikepedia.  Where did this sketch come from?  There is more that a 'subtle' difference in these two sketches.  Why does the second one say it is a 'typical Melungeon' it looks nothing like Calloway Collins? It says it was "Drawn from a photograph taken by Will Allen Dromgoole" but the above is the sketch made by the artist that accompanied Ms Dromgoole to Newmans Ridge.

On the Olive Tree Genealogy Blog,  Lorine McGinnis Schulze had added to the sketch "Credits: "A typical malungeon" was published in 1890 by Will Allen Dromgoole, it found in Nashville Sunday American, August 31, 1890 


Why does the 'Typical Melungeon" appear August 31st in Nashville newpspaper and 'Calloway Collins' whose grandfather was full blood Cherokee appear in the Oregon newpspaper two weeks later?   

Did Dromgoole's artist sketch both of these?  Is the second one the man Dromgoole refers to as 'King" in THE LAST OF THE MALUNGEONS

Indians of Hancock County Tennessee

Indians of Hancock County, Tennessee

The Cherokee Boundary of 1785 went through Sneedville as did the Kentucky Road [Wilderness Trail] as the map below shows. 

I have not found the source for this nor can I vouch for it's accuracy;

John Reed Swanton's Indians of the Southeastern United StatesBulletin 137 of the Bureau of American Ethnology,Smithsonian Institution, 1946.

''Swanton reported that there were three bands of the Yuchi (Uchee or Euchee): a southern one centered near the present Macon, Georgia; a middle one near the present Talladega, Alabama; and a northern one centered on Newman's Ridge in Hancock County, Tennessee. The northern band were not among the Yuchi forced to relocate in Indian Territory in the 1830s. They were settled on the Qualla Reservation with the Eastern Cherokee band and allowed one representative on the tribal council. All deliberations were in Cherokee, which none of the Yuchi understood (understandable, since Cherokee belongs to the Iroquoian language stock and Yuchi to the Siouan one).   After two years of feeling like strangers among the Cherokees, the Yuchi left and returned to Newman's Ridge.''

It is interesting though that the "Emassees and Malunjins show up together in Dothan, Alabama.

THE EMASSEES AND MALUNJINS

One tribe of Indians and a community of mixed breed Indians were unmolested by the whites. These were the Uchees or Emassees, kinsman of the Seminoles or Creeks, who lived at the mouth of the Emassee or O'Mussee or Mercer creek near Columbia, and the Malunjins, a mixed breed community residing some three to six miles northeast of Dothan toward Webb even as late as 1865. Where the Malunjins came from nobody knows; where they were dispersed to is the limbo of forgotten men. B. P. Poyner, Sr., father of Houston County Probate Judge, S.P.Poyner, was born in the Malunjins' community. Some of these mixed breed Indians brought milk to Mr. Poyner's mother while he was an infant. The Emassees were allied by affinity with the Creeks and Seminoles yet during all of Alabama's territorial and state days were friendly to the whites. Only a squatter white family settled  here and there and lived in old Henry County prior to 1817. Save for these squatters there were no  white settlers in Henry County at the time of the Creek War of 1812-13. The Alabama Lawyer: Official Organ State Bar of AlabamaBy Alabama State BarPublished by The Bar, 1942

On November 6, 1837, the Hawkins County Land Platt Book records the survey for James Livesay of 500 acres of land on an "Indian village on the waters of Painter [Panther Creek]  on the north side of Clinch River."

THE MORRISTOWN  GAZETTE

NOTES AND DOTS

Sneedville, Aug. 16, 1878.To the Editor of the Morristown Gazette :

Where the village of Sneedville is situated was once an Indian town. There are any quantity of flints half finished, scattered about over a wide extent in and around the village, showing that this was a place where they manufactured darts for their arrows, with which they killed their game. Many battle-axes, tomahawks, pestles, and remnants of Instruments and vessels of pottery used by the aborigines have been picked up in years gone by, so that now they are seldom found. Within a quarter of a mile of the court-house there is still visible a round-shaped knoll which may be a mound. It was once much sharper than it now is, so sharp that cattle never resorted to it for rest. It has been ploughed over and cultivated; and is now very much flattened.. I have seen many mounds, and am inclined to express it as my opinion that this - is a regular mound. Right here, allow me to say that I am in correspondence with the officers of the Smithsonian Institute, Washington, D. C, who request me to collect all evidences of these singular formations, and transmit information and specimens to them. which I am doing, and respectfully request those who have any Indian battle-axes, tomahawks, arrow heads pottery, or other implements or trinkets once in posession of the Indians who formerly roamed over this country as "lords of creation," to send them to me at Morristown.

Notes And Dots