Gawin The Indian

GAWEN GAWIN

Mr. Thomas Bushrod Order 18 Oct. 1670 court Servitude for 6 more years Gawin, servant to Bushrod, is to serve his master for six more years before he is set free. [McIlwaine 1979B:233]

Gawin, The Indian,  set free by Thomas Bushrod 1676

Is this Gawin  The Indian?  Ancestor of Michael, Edward and Thomas Goins of New Kent?

1682, April 20 – Gawen Gawin 1000a s side of Totopottomoys Cr in New Kent Co, Va.   Gawen Gawin – New Kent Co VA Land Grant 1682 

VA Patents 7, p. 160

Library of Virginia Digital Collection: Land Office Patents and Grants.  Gawin 1000

To all &c. Whereas &c. Now Know yee that I S[i]r Henry [Ch—eley?] K[nigh]t deputy [governor?] [do] give and grannt unto Gawen Gawin One tho[w?]sand acres of land lying in the County of New Kent upon the South side of [Totopottomoys?] Creeke & bounded as followeth begining upon the upper line of *Cornelius Dabneys land runing South South East along the said line three hundred twenty five pole to a markt red oake from thence West five hundred & twoe pole to a marked hiccory from thence North North West three hundred twenty five pole to a marked red oake [—?] the said Creeke from thence downe the said Creeke to the first Station the said land being formerly grannted to John [Davis?] by Pattent bearing date the [27?]th February [1660?] and by him [deserted?] and now grannted to the said Gawin [by order?] of the Gener[al] Court and [further?] due by and for the transportacon of twenty p[er]sons into this Colony whose names [—?] under this pattent menconed To have & to hold &c. To be held &c. Yeilding & paying &c. Provided &c. Dated the twentieth of Aprill [1682?] ~

{Names subject to interpretation}

John Boyer, Tho: Ponger, Geo: Taylor, [Tho:?] Barrow, And: Hill, Corne: Degar, Cathe: Hubbard, John Pore, [Bess?], Sam[?] Thomas, Mary Lemon, John [Ravenel?], Sam:ll Walton, Margaret [Cheney?], Dan:ld [Shalton?], Jon: Wallington,
Jon: Jackson, [Ja-?] Lindsey, Mary Denham, Mariah.

*Cornelius Dabney was Interpreter to the Queen of the Pamunkey Cockacoeske:

Cockacoeske, also known as Cockacoeweske, was a Pamunkey chief, and a descendant of Opechancanough, brother of the paramount chief Powhatan. After the death of her husband, Totopotomoy, chief of the Pamunkey from about 1649 until 1656, Cockacoeske became queen of the Pamunkey

Original Here 

Fort Royal

Following the Third Anglo-Powhatan War, the General Assembly began setting up Forts along York River and its tributaries (which are known now as the Pamunkey and Mattaponi Rivers).[1] Captain Roger Marshall was to manage Fort Royal (also known as Rickahock), for three years.[1] After fulfilling the requirements he was granted a patent for the 600 acres of Rickahock (including Fort Royal and any buildings within), on March 14, 1649.[1] That same day he sold these 600 acres of Rickahock to General Manwarring Hammond.[1] [Wikipedia^] 

John Bunch arrived in Lancaster, VA in 1651. He is the first Bunch to settle in America according to all records to date. John was given a court order dated June 6, 1654, requiring him to show evidence of a Mr. Toby Horton loaning guns to Indians. He failed to appear and was fined 200 pounds of tobacco. New Kent Co., Virginia deed book 5, shows that John was assigned 450 acres on both sides of the Rickahock Path. 

Remnant of Indian Race - Brownlow

 

Watson's Jeffersonian Magazine -
Page 522   1911 by John Bell Brownlow

Son of the Parson Brownlow of the 1840
WHIG articles on the Malungeons

Impudent Malungeons

THE REMNANT OF AN INDIAN RACE

Dear Sir:

Your letter of yesterday received. I happen to have the information you seek. The Nashville American of  June 26, 1910 (since consolidated with the Nashville Tennessean) published a paper of about 10 pages in celebration of its 98th anniversary and in this paper is the true story of a small number of people to be found in a few counties of East Tennessee, as in other sections of the Appalachian region, called Melungeons or Malungeons. I have traveled horse-back before, during and since the Civil War, in the counties where these people live, and have seen them in their cabin homes and from information received independently of what Judge Shepherd says, I am satisfied his statement is to be relied upon.

The foremost jury lawyer of East Tenn. of his generation was the late Hon. John Netherland, the son-in-law of the John A. McKinney, referred to by Lucy S. V. King, and he gave me the same account, substantially, of the origin of these people that Judge Shepherd does.  Netherland was the Whig candidate for Governor of Tennessee in 1859, against Isham G. Harris. He died in the 80's. He was a slave-owner and practised law in all the East Tennessee counties, which these people live.

 

Prior to 1824 free negroes voted in Tennessee, and when in that year the State Constitution was so amended as to disfranchise "all free persons of color", it was sometimes made the pretext of refusing the franchise to these people of perfectly straight hair, small hands and shapely feet who bore no more resemblance to a negro than do members of the Spanish or Portuguese embassies of Washington. As to whether they voted or not, in the few counties where they were up to the Civil War, depended upon the disposition of the election officers and the closeness of the contest. But I will add that the election officers were very rarely unfair and their right to vote rarely challenged. Sometimes, in a very close contest, some fellow would challenge it and the man would forego exercising his rights rather than fight about it. They have not been of a lawless or turbulent disposition. They realized the prejudice against them because of their dark complexion. Some of them served in the Confederate, and some in the Federal East Tennessee Regiment, but neither side would have accepted them had they believed they had negro blood in their veins.

 

In my boyhood days they were called Portuguese. The word Melangeon is comparatively modern as to its general use. As a rule they did not go into either army; did not wish to. They preferred agriculture; happy in their mountain cabins. The extract from McKinney's speech is garbled. He truly said the language of the disfranchising clause included these people because it embraced "all free persons of color" but notwithstanding that the majority of them always voted because their neighbors did not regard them as negroes or as having negro blood in their veins. I believe there was some mixture of these Portuguese with the Cherokee Indians, but not with negroes. Lying, sensational newspaper correspondents, from the North, originally started this racket to show that Southern whites were given to miscegenating with negroes, and to have something to write about. Some Southern writers have imitated them, magnifying fifty or one hundred fold the number of these people.

 

Gen. Wm. T. Sherman did some things I disapproved as much as you do, but he hit the nail on the head when he said that "there were some newspaper correspondents who, to create a sensation and for pay, would slander their grandmothers." Of course, some of the people were shiftless and degraded, as are some of all races, but I remember a notable exception by the name of Wm. Lyle. He was a prosperous country merchant who came to Knoxville every year to buy goods of our wholesale dealers and was treated by every one, with the utmost respect. He was spoken of as a Portuguese, and bore no more resemblance to a negro than any Spaniard or Portuguese. He dressed elegantly, was well informed and as polished and refined as half the members of Congress, and more so than many of them. In the early history of the country, there were many Spanish and Portuguese sailors, who settled on the South Carolina and North Carolina coast. One of these was a Spanish ship carpenter by name of Farragut. In North Carolina, he married a poor girl and drifted to this city (then a town of about 1,200 people) where he followed the trade of house-carpenter, and here was born his subsequently famous son, Admiral David G. Farragut. His Spanish father was a dark-skinned man.

Finally, the decision of the Supreme Court of Tennessee in 1872, referred to by Judge Shepherd, should be conclusive on this subject. Every one of the five members of that Court was a Confederate and Democrat. The Chief Justice, A. Q. P. Nicholson, was the Colleague of Andrew Johnson in the U. S. Senate in 1861. Jas. W. Deaderick, after this decision and after the death of Nicholson, also of the bench at the time, succeeded Nicholson as Chief Justice. He was not himself in the army but every one of his seven sons were at the front in the Confederate Army, some of whom were badly wounded and the other three Judges had honorable records as Confederate soldiers. Judge Shepherd himself was a Confederate soldier.

 
JOHN B. BROWNLOW.

 

P. S. Lyle is not a Portuguese name, neither is that of the American Darbey's French, as was that of their ancestor D.Aublgney.

---

Tractado das Ilhas Novas - 1570

 Date: June 23, 1907

Paper: Dallas Morning News

Peculiar Peoples In America

By Frederic J. Haskins

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Sheltered by some pocket in the hills living in seclusion in some quiet valley or guarded by impenetrable grasses in some far everglade, there are here and there throughout the United States groups of people that are peculiar and distinctive from the rest of the inhabitatants. Segregating in close communities they have preserved for centuries, traits and characteristics of some remote and often unknown ancestry, and through traditon only can they trace their past.  

....On Newman's ridge in Hancock County, Tennessee, overlooking the beautiful Clinch River Valley, lives one of the most mysterios people in America.  Through their Anglo-Saxon neighbors or through writers of romance the name "Malungeon" has been given them, a name that the better element resents.  They resemble in feature the Cherokee Indians, and yet have a strong, Caucasian cast of countenance that makes their claim to Portuguese descent seem probable.  They came, so a legend runs, of a bard of Portuguese pirates, who long yeas ago were wrecked on an unknown coast, became adopted into an Indian tribe and were part of the Cherokees who two or three centuries later refused to go West and live on the reservation that a kindly Government offered when it needed their Eastern lands.

In the 'Tractado das Ilhas Novas" written by Frandisco de Sousa in 1570, and published in San Miguel, Azores, only about forty years ago, there is an account of a Portuguese colony which is said to have existed on the eastern coast of British North America over 100 years before Jamestown was settled.  This colony was known as Terra Nova, and from 1500 to 1579 the records at Lisbon show that commissions were regularly issued to Gaspar and Miguel Corte Real as Governors of the settlement.  One hundred years before Columbus came to these shores it is claimed that the Basques, then great seafarers, but now a mountain people of Spain, came to these shores and lent much of their language to Indian dialects.  From the Corte Real settlements and from these Basques speculating historians have tried to draw an ancestry for the "Malungeons."  Whatever the origin may be as a people they were practically outcasts for many years.  They were there in the Tennessee mountains when John Sevier organized the State of Franklin, and were supposed by their neighbors to be Moors.  In 1834 they were denied the right of suffrage because they were accounted "free person of color," and for many years suffered this political indignity.  As a natural consequence they became lawbreakers and evaders of the newer processes of civilization.  It is claimed that there is also negro blood in the "Malungeon" strain.

In Robeson County, North Carolina, lives the remnant of the once powerful Croatan Indian tribe which welcomed Amadas and Barlowe when they came to Roanoke Island of whom Hakluyt wrote in his "Voyages."  The explorers claim to have found several auburn-haired children among them, the Indians explaining that they were descendants of some shipwrecked white men picked up on the coast of Secotan twenty six years before.   These modern Croatans are even more pronounced in the proof of an Anglo-Saxon strain, and yet they have not intermarried with their white neighbors.  There are several hundred of these Indians, some of whom have light hair, others have blue eyes, and names Dorr and Dare are said to be common among them.  Because of this, historians have deduced the theory that the remnants of Whate's colony which disappeared from Roanoke Island between 1587 and 1590 were taken away into the camps of the Croatan or Hatteras Indians and that Ananias Dare, his wife and little Virginia gave their name and their coloring to the tribe as we find it today.

Smithsonian Institution - The Melungeons

 Smithsonian Institution Bureau of American Ethnology - Ethnology - 1907

page 365

Croatan Indians. The legal designation in North Carolina for a people evidently of mixed Indian and white blood, found in various e. sections of the state, but chiefly in Robeson co., and numbering approximately 5,000. For many years they were classed with the free negroes, but steadily refused to accept such classification or to attend the negro schools or churches, claiming to be the descendants of the earlv native tribes and of white settlers who had intermarried with them. About 20 years ago their claim was officially recognized and they were given a separate legal existence under the title of "Croatan Indians," on the theory of descent from Raleigh's lost colony of Croatan (q. v.).

Under this name they now have separate school provision and are admitted to some privileges not accorded to the negroes. The theory of descent from the lost colony may be regarded as baseless, but the name itself serves as a convenient label for a people who combine in themselves the blood of the wasted native tribes, the early colonists or forest rovers, the runaway slaves or other negroes, and probably also of stray seamen of the Latin races from coasting vessels in the West Indian or Brazilian trade.

Across the line in South Carolina are found a people, evidently of similar origin, designated "Red bones." In portions of w. N. C. and E. Tenn. are found the so-called "Melungeons" (probably from French melangi', 'mixed') or "Portuguese," apparently an offshoot from the Croatan proper, and in Delaware are found the "Moors." All of these are local designations for peoples of mixed race with an Indian nucleus differing in no way from the present mixed-blood remnants known as Pamunkey, Chicka- hominy, and Nansemond Indians in Virginia, excepting in the more complete loss of their identity. In general, the physical features and complexion of the persons of this mixed stock incline more to the Indian than to the white or negro. See Mi-tis, Mixed bloods

Also Published:
Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico -
by Frederick Webb Hodge - Indians of North America - 1911

The Melungeons - Lewis Jarvis

 

Lewis Jarvis
Hancock County Times
1903

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Much has been said and written about the inhabitants of Newman’s Ridge and Blackwater in Hancock County, Tenn. They have been derisively dubbed with the name “Melungeons” by the local white people who have lived here with them. It is not a traditional name or tribe of Indians.

Some have said these people were here when the white people first explored this country. Others say they are a lost tribe of the Indians having no date of their existence here, traditionally or otherwise.

All of this however, is erroneous and cannot be sustained. These people, not any of them were here at the time the first white hunting party came from Virginia and North Carolina in the year 1761-- the noted Daniel Boone was at the head of one of these hunting parties and went on through Cumberland Gap. Wallen was at the head of another hunting party from Cumberland County, Virginia and called the river beyond North Cumberland Wallen’s Ridge and Wallen’s Creek for himself. In fact these hunting parties gave all the historic names to the mountain ridges and valleys and streams and these names are now historical names.

Wallen pitched his first camp on Wallen’s Creek near Hunter’s gap in Powell’s Mountain, now Lee County, Virginia. Here they found the name of Ambrose Powell carved in the bark of a beech tree; from this name they named the mountain, river and valley for Powell, Newman’s Ridge was named for a man of the party called Newman. Clinch River and Clinch valley--these names came at the expense of an Irish man of the party in crossing the Clinch River, he fill off the raft they were crossing on and cried aloud for his companions to “Clench me”, “Clench me,’ and from this incident the name has become a historic name.

About the time the first white settlement west of the Blue Ridge was made at Watauga River in Carter County, Tennessee, another white party was then working the lead mines in part of Virginia west of the Blue Ridge. In the year 1762 these hunters turned, coming through Elk Garden, now Russell County, Virginia. They then headed down a valley north of Clinch River and named it Hunter’s Valley and buy this name it goes today. These hunters pitched their tent near Hunter’s gap in Powell’s mountain, nineteen mile from Rogersville, Tennessee on the Jonesville, Virginia road. Some of the party of hunter went on down the country to where Sneedville, Hancock County, now stands and hunted there during that season.

Bear were plentiful here and they killed many, their clothing became greasy and near the camp was a projecting rock on which they would lie down and drink and the rock became very greasy and they called it Greasy Rock and named the creek Greasy Rock Creek, a name by which it has ever since been known and called since, and here is the very place where these Melungeons settled, long after this, on Newman’s Ridge and Blackwater.

“Vardy Collins, Shepherd Gibson, Benjamin Collins, Solomon Collins, Paul Bunch and the Goodmans, chiefs and the rest of them settled here about the year 1804, possibly about the year 1795, but al these men above named, who are called Melungeons, obtained land grants and muniments of title to the land they settled on and they were the friendly Indians who came with the whites as they moved west. They came from the Cumberland County and New River, Va., stopping at various points west of the Blue Ridge. Some of them stopped on Stony Creek, Scott County, and Virginia, where Stoney Creek runs into Clinch River.

The white emigrants with the friendly Indians erected a fort on the bank of the river and called it Fort Blackmore and here yet many of these friendly “Indians” live in the mountains of Stony creek, but they have married among the whites until the race has almost become extinct. A few of the half bloods may be found-none darker- but they still retain the name of Collins and Gibson, &c. From here they came to Newman’s Ridge and Blackwater and many of them are here yet; but the amalgamations of the whites and Indians has about washed the red tawny from their appearance, the white faces predominating, so now you scarcely find one of the original Indians; a few half-bloods and quarter-bloods-balance white or past the third generation.

The old pure blood were finer featured, straight and erect in form, more so than the whites and when mixed with whites made beautiful women and the men very fair looking men. These Indians came to Newman’s Ridge and Blackwater. Some of them went into the War of 1812-1914 whose names are here given; James Collins, John Bolin and Mike Bolin and some others not remembered; those were quite full blooded. These were like the white people; there were good and bad among them, but the great majority were upright, good citizens and accumulated good property and many of them are among our best property owners and as good as Hancock County, Tennessee affords. Their word is their bond and most of them that ever came to Hancock county, Tennessee, then Hawkins County and Claiborne, are well remembered by some of the present generation here and now and they have left records to show these facts.

They all came here simultaneously with the whites from the State of Virginia, between the years 1795 and 1812 and about this there is no mistake, except in the dates these Indians came here from Stoney Creek.

---

In a letter dated August 12, 1942 Mrs. John Trotwood Moore wrote in response to a letter from Walter Plecker

Capt. L. M. Jarvis, an old citizen of Sneedville wrote in his 82nd year:

"I have lived here at the base of Newman's Ridge, Blackwater, being on the opposite side, for the last 71 years and well know the history of these people on Newman's Ridge and Blackwater enquired about as Melungeons. These people were friendly to the Cherokees who came west with the white imigration from New River and Cumberland, Virginia, about the year 1790...The name Melungeon was given them on account of their color. I have seen the oldest and first settlers of this tribe who first occupied Newman's Ridge and Blackwater and I have owned much of the lands on which they settled.. They obtained their land grants from North Carolina. I personally knew Vardy Collins, Solomon D. Collins, Shepard Gibson, Paul Bunch and Benjamin Bunch and many of the Goodmans, Moores, Williams and Sullivans, all of the very first settlers and noted men of these friendly Indians. They took their names from white people of that name with whom they came here. They were reliable, truthful and faithful to anything they promised. In the Civil War most of the Melungeons went into the Union army and made good soldiers. Their Indian blood has about run out. They are growing white... They have been misrepresented by many writers. In former writings I have given their stations  and stops on their way as they emigrated to this country with white people, one of which places was at the mouth of Stony Creek on Clinch river in Scott County, Virginia, where they built fort and called it Ft. Blackamore after Col. Blackamore who was with them... When Daniel Boone was here hunting 1763-1767, these Melungeons were not here."

Phase in Ethnology - Mooney

 

Washington Post
 1902

PHASE IN ETHNOLOGY

Mr. James Mooney Investigates Early Portuguese Settlements.

Mr. James Mooney, who has just returned from Indian Territory, where he has
been making a study of the Kiowa tribe for the Bureau of Ethnology, has also
during his career as an anthropologist done considerable work in the way of
investigating the Portuguese settlements along the Atlantic coast of the
United States, a subject about which less is known than most any other phase
of the modern ethnology of America. All along the southern coast there are
scattered here and there bands of curious people, whose appearance, color,
and hair seem to indicate a cross or mixture of the Indian, the white, and
the negro. Such, for example, are the Pamunkeys of Virginia, the Croatan
Indians of the Carolinas, the Malungeons of Tennessee, and numerous other
peoples who in the days of slavery were regarded as free negroes and were
frequently hunted down and enslaved. Since the war they have tried hard by
act of legislature and other wise to establish their Indian ancestry.

Wherever these people are found there also will the traveler or investigator
passing through their region encounter the tradition of Portuguese blood or
descent, and many have often wondered how these people came to have such a
tradition or, in view of their ignorance, how they came to even know of the
name of Portugal or the Portuguese. The explanation is, however, far
simpler than one might imagine. In the first place, the Portuguese have
always been a seagoing people, and according to Mr. Mooney, who has looked
up the subject, the early records of Virginia and the Carolinas contain
notices of Portuguese ships having gone to wreck on the coasts of these
States and of the crews settling down and marrying in with Indians and
mulattoes.

Moreover, there are records of Portuguese ships having sailed into Jamestown
Bay as early as 1655, and since then there has been more or less settlement
of Portuguese fishermen and sailors from Maine to Florida. Now it has been
the history of the Portuguese race that wherever they settled they mixed in
with the darker peoples forming the aboriginal populations of the countries
occupied by Portuguese settlers, and this is the reason and cause of the
Portuguese admixture among the tribes along the coast of the United States.

In further proof of this he calls attention to the case of a colony of
Portuguese fishermen who settled on the coast of Massachusetts a few years
ago. These settlers have nothing whatever to do with the white or Yankee
population around them, but are intermarrying and intermixing among and with
the small remnant of the Narragansett Indians who have survived down to the
present day. In short, it has been the history of the Portuguese that
wherever they settled along the Atlantic coast they have intermixed and
intermarried among the remnants of the Indian tribes that were once the sole
proprietors of that region.

North Carolina Croatans

 ODD THINGS ABOUT INDIANS

Atlanta Constitution

July 21, 1901

Excerpt;

North Carolina's Croatans, who claim to be descendants pf Raleigh's lost colony are not the only peculiar people among the red inhabitants of these United States. The claim is not new it has been more or less exploited these thirty years, along with that of the still more curious Melungeons of East Tennessee.  Their name, said to come from the French melange, a mixture, must be pre-eminently fit, since they show racial characteristics of the Cherokees, the negroes, the Portuguese, and the plain, ordinary poor whites.

 

Their language is as mixed as their blood, and their civilization is in somewhat the same condition.

Over against them set their neighbors, the Eastern Cherokees, who live in Qualla boundary in western North Carolina, and are so up-to-date they have formed themselves into a regular corporation, so as to share in the government benefits which were in danger of monopoly by the, rich and out-reaching western Cherokee nation. 

Secrets of Croatans

 

A DESCENDANT OF MISSING COLONY

 

Secret of the Croatan Tribe-- The Famous

Roanoke Settlers Were Not Massacred,

But affiliated With a Friendly and Powerful

Nation of Indians

 

St. Louis Dispatch

 

Former United States Senator Hiram R. Revels, of Mississippi, has always been classed as a negro.  He was a tall, well-built man, with the chocolate skin and curly hair of the African and the devout bearing of his profession the ministerial.  He served during the reconstruction period, never being known as prominent, but always as a representative colored man.  Rebels was not a negro.  Dr. C. A. Peterson of St. Louis, (See Bill Arp's Letter for more on Dr. Peterson)  who had made a study of the lost Roanoke (Va.) colony says that Revels is a descendant of that mystery-shrouded band that Sir Walter Raleigh sent to Roanoke Island in 1587.

 

..... Now for the facts which the historians have generally so singularly overlooked. In 1710 when the Huguenots and Cavaliers started to penetrate the interior of North Carolina, they found some seventy-vive miles from the coast in what is now Robeson,  N.C.,  a colony of English speaking people,  many of whom had blue eyes and light hair.  They inquired where they came from and they replied.  "From Croatan' How does it come that your speak English!' 'Our fathers were English'

 

"They wrote one letter about their discovery, a letter by the way, is in the archives of the board of trade of London.

 

It is evident that a number of the Huguenots remained in a colony and intermarried, as there are a great many names of undoubted French origin to be found among the Croatan names of the present day.

 

"these people have always been called Croatans.  There are some 4,000 of them living in robeson county, N. C. at the present time, but they have scattered all over the South and West.  I have found Croatan names among all the civilized tribes living in the Indian Territory.

 

"The Croatans have distinct racial characteristics. They are as black as Portuguese and are different in appearance from either Indians, negroes or Caucasians.  In some instances there has evidently been a mixture with negro blood, and on this account when in 1833 North Carolina and Tennessee disfranchised the negroes, they included the Croatans.

 

When the war broke out the Croatans were between two fires.  Those who did not enlist in the Southern army were liable to be impressed as negroes for work on fortifications, etc.  From this custom came the cause of the depredations of the Lowry gang which for years spread terror in North Carolina.

 

"Old man Lowry resisted impressment, declaring that there was nothing but English and Indian blood in his veins and that he was as much an American freeman, and had as good blood in him as the Harrisons, the Randolphs, or any of the descendants of the proudest colonial families.  For this stubborn stand he was shot dead.

 

"When his son, Henry Berry Lowry reached his manhood he took his gun, organized a band of sympathizers and started out on a mission of extermination.  every man suspected of having had any connection with his father's death was waylaid and killed.  the gang was finally broke up, but not until it had collect bloody interest on old many Lowry's death.

 

"The most eminent of the Croatans was United States senator Revels, who was elected from Mississippi during the reconstruction days.  he was classed as a negro, but he was in reality a Croatan, one of those with a Huguenot name and ancestry.

 

"The family names of the Croatans are the same as those of the settlers on Roanoke Island.  They were men from Devonshiren England and furthermore even the broad Devonshire pronunciation is found in certain words as used by the Croatans of today.

 

"A hundred years ago a colony of Croatans settled in eastern Tennessee, on Newman's Ridge, in Hancock county.  They can't tell today where they came from, for tradition over 50 years isn't worth anything.  These are the people called Melungeons.  They are similar in racial characteristics to the Croatans, and Dr. Swan M. Burnett, a distinguished scholar and scientitst - the husband, by the way, of Mrs. Francis Hodgson Burnett, the novelist - has traced by family names the connection between the Melungeons and the Croatans.

 

The name Melungeons is accounted for in this wise;  when the new settlers appeared among the mountaineers their unusual looks prompted inquiries as to what they were.  The answer was 'Melange" -- or a mixture -- and the mountaineers at once dubbed them Melungeons."

Melungeons Portuguese Ancestry

                                               THE MELUNGEONS OF TENNESSEE

AND THEIR PORTUGUESE ANCESTRY

Marion Daily Star -
 August 15, 1900

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~Many of Them Fought In the Civil War ~But Are Now Moonshiners~Intelligence a Characteristic~Also Fondness For Firearms and Firewater~[Special Correspondence]

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Owensboro, Tenn., Aug. 14.--

While much has been written from time to time about the "poor whites," mountaineers and the "Georgia Crackers," yet there is a still more peculiar class of southerners who have until lately escaped notice. These people are called the Malungeons. They are copper colored with high cheek bones, straight noses, black hair, rather coarse, black eyes, and have more intelligence than the average mountaineers.

A great deal of trouble has come to them because of their color and customs. The Malungeons number between 400 and 500. They live on Black Water Creek, in Hancock County, which section they have inhabited for more than 100 years. (2)

The records of Hancock County show that the Malungeon ancestors came to Powell's Valley as early as 1789, when they took up lands on the Black Water. Tradition says that they held aloof from the white settlers and spoke a strange language which not one of the pioneers could fathom. Some of them could speak broken English, and by this means communicated with the white merchants to the extent of buying arms, ammunition and other supplies which could not be procured in the valleys of their mountain homes.

Before the war the Malungeons had a hard time in obtaining the right to vote in the elections. The white citizens declared that they were negroes and the matter was finally carried into the courts. It developed that the ancestors of these people immigrated to this country from Portugal, about 150 years ago, and has spent considerable time in South Carolina before going to Tennessee. They proved on the witness stand that there was not a drop of negro blood in their veins, and, after long and tedious litigation, were allowed to vote and exercise the full privileges of American citizenship.

When the Civil War broke out in 1861, the Malungeons espoused the cause of the Union. They fought in the usual mountain fashion--bushwhacking--and many a Confederate soldier was killed by the unerring bullets of their riflemen. Whenever the Confederates captured one of them he was shot on the spot without mercy. After the war terminated and the Malungeons returned to their old pursuits, they found that the government was interfering with one of their chief industries---making whiskey.

They had been distillers back in South Carolina and some of the earliest stills in Tennessee were brought by their ancestors--over the mountains from their original settlement. they killed revenue officers just as the other mountaineers did, for disturbing their stills. Of late years, however, the revenue men have been so persistent in the work of destroying the illicit traffic that the Malungeons have sold but small quantities of the whiskey openly. They still make moonshine whisky, but have adopted the artful, dodging tactics of the other moonshiners of the Tennessee and Kentucky mountains, and it is rare that one of the race is caught. So far as it is known not one of the Malungeons has ever ridden on a railroad train.

The deep religious nature of these southerners is the most striking of all their characteristics. During their meetings they will sing and shout until almost frantic with religious fervor. One of the old patriarchs of the Malungeons was Uncle Vard Collins. Many years ago noted church bishop (8) was traveling through the Black Water district. He accidentally went to Uncle Vard's house and asked to stay overnight with him, a privilege readily granted.

When the churchman told the old man he was a bishop, the patriarch said he would like to hear him preach. The visitor inquired where the congregation would come from. For an answer the host took a long dinner horn from his rack, and, going outdoors, blew several shrill blasts. Within an hour 100 people had assembled, and showed great interest in the sermon.

The Malungeons were Whigs before the Civil War, but since then have had no direct affiliation with any movements of a political nature. Their social customs have not changed in 200 years. They still live in one roomed cabins and use the old fashioned long barreled rifle.

Newton Otis

---

"A PECULIAR PEOPLE"Printed ~INDIANA MESSENGER ~INDIANA, PENNSYLVANIAMARCH 17, 1897 -From the St. Louis Globe-DemocratA Peculiar People

Wed Palefaces

 FORT WORTH REGISTER

NOVEMBER 24, 1900

 

CAN WED PALEFACES

 

Middlesboro, Ky., Nov., 18 --- An edict has been issued by the Malungeon Indians, who live in the mountains of Hancock county, Tenn., sixty miles or more from Middlesboro, giving the maidens of the tribe the right to choose their husbands from the pale-faces.  Formerly this was a violation of one of the sacred laws of the tribe and the girl that married a white mans was banished from Indians society. But now the chief men have decided that the daughters of the tribe should secure pale-faced husbands, and as an inducement they are offering to every white man who will take an Indian wife from 50 to 100 acres of mountain land.

 

The number of acres of course, depends on the quality of the husband and the man who comes well recommended will get a better wife and a better farm that the man who does not.  But the Malungeons only want the best of whites, and hoboes need not apply.  The applicant must be honest and industrious and of good character.  he must also give a solemn promise that he will forever eschew the daughters of the pale-faced nation, which in effect is that he will love and protect his Indian wife as faithfully as he would one of his own race.

 

The Malungeons made this offer because they came to the conclusion that their race was doomed and that the only way to save it was by amalgamation.  Continuous intermarriage among the Indians is resulting in inferior progeny.  after a few years it is said, the Malungeons will return to their old law of marriages only among their own race.

 

The Malungeons number about 150.  They are the last of a once numerous and powerful race older than Tennessee itself.  A tradition among them is that they are descendants of a colony of Portuguese who amalgamated with the Cherokee Indians hundreds of years ago.  Another legend is that they are descendants of the lost colony of Roanoke and the redskins.  The lost colony of Roanoke was composed of English settlers, who made their home on the eastern shore of Virginia.  The Malungeons are thrifty farmers and honest and upright as a rule.  They are brown-skinned and black-haired and have regular features.

The Website

 

I started researching the families who were called Melungeons in 1988, although I did not know at the time there were called Melungeons.  I was hooked up to internet in 1996 and almost immediately asking in a Virginia chat room about my Gibsons I was told they were Melungeons.  Thus started my hunt. 

In 2002 after attending the "Melungeon Reunion" in Kingsport, Tennessee, I seen, heard and read things that just didn't seem right; they were Turkish, they were Jews from Scotland, they carried inherited diseases etc., etc., etc.  I decided it was time to put my research online.  So for the last twenty years I have been paying to keep the website going.  

I've decided to transfer documents, articles and such to the Google Blog, DOCUMENTING THE MELUNGEONS and hope to have it finished in the next few weeks.  

If you scroll all the way down the page you will see September 2022 there have been 31 pages added today - in chronological order, Still have a lot of tweaking to do - starting at the bottom just click on the links. 

Documenting the Melungeons & Their Kin  

BLOG ARCHIVE

• ▼  2022 (39)
  • ▼  September (31)
    • Croatans Melungeons Cherokee
    • More Mahala Mullins
    • Mahala Mullins Murdered?
    • Charles Kesterson - Melungeon
    • StrangePeople of Tennessee
    • Peculiar People 1897
    • Indians Croatans Melungeons 1897
    • Bill Arp's Letter 1897
    • Peculiar Race in East Tennessee 1897
    • Visit to the Malungeons 1897
    • Sheriff Buttery Hancock County 1897
    • 1894 Articles
    • Malungeons at the World's Fair -1894
    • Lost Colony
    • The Malungeons - Dromgoole
    • American Notes and Queries
    • Indians Taxed and Not Taxed 1890
    • Peculiar Race of People
    • A Strange People
    • Land of the Malungeons
    •  July 17, 1890--Red Springs, North CarolinaHamilto...
    •  AN EARLY UNTARNISHED VERSION OF 'THE MELUNGEONS'F...
    •  AN EARLY UNTARNISHED VERSION OF 'THE MELUNGEONS'F...
    •  A NOTE ON THE MELUNGEONS By Swan M. Burnett, M. D....
    •  Transcribed From Goodspeed's History of Tennessee...
    •  --The Republic: a monthly magazine, devoted to th...
    •  Parson William G. Brownlow ~ Frederick A. Ross
    •  Molungeons & Melungeons  ..
    •  Littell's Living AgeMarch 1849 "THE MELUNGENS  1848
    •   In this contemporary political cartoon,"true Whi... 1840

Croatans Melungeons Cherokee

 

The Croatans A Class of People about Whom Even the Dictionary Knows Nothing


Excerpt;

" though these people principally reside in Robeson county there are
settlements of them in both the Carolinas and in East Tennessee, where they are
known as Melungeans, a corruption of the French Melange, or mixed, a
description of them given by the early French settlers. Those in Robeson county
"are generally white, showing the Indian mostly in actions and habits."
They seem not to be white enough to gain admission to the public schools for
the whites, and too white to gain admission to the public schools for
blacks, and so special schools were provided for them in 1885.

The Melungeans of Tennessee, however, dispute the statement that they are
Croatans, and "claim to be Cherokees of mixed blood (white, Indian and
negro), their white blood being derived from English and Portuguese stock. They
trace their descent primarily to two Indians (Cherokees) known one of them
as Collins the other as Gibson, who settled in the mountains of Tennessee,
where their descendants are now to be

More Mahala Mullins

 

---

 

Mahala Mullins
1824 - 1898

NOT TOO BIG FOR DEATH
 Knoxville- September 24, 1898

 

Mahala Mullins, a noted moonshiner of Hancock County, is dead, aged 75.  She was the mother of 18 children and weighed 550 pounds.  It is reported that she was poisoned by envious makers of illicit whiskey.  She had been arrested frequently but the officers could not remove her on account of her size and the isolated location of her home.
 

---

Naugatuck Daily News  September 19, 1898

Mahala Mullins, Moonshiner, Dead

Knoxville,  Sept. 19

Mahala Mullins, a white woman weighing 650 pounds, who for years has been the most noted moonshiner of the Tennessee mountains, is dead.  She had defied arrest for many years as the revenue officers were not able to take her down the mountains.  She dealt in illicit whiskey in large quantities, and openly said that it was not wrong for her to make her living in that manner. But when the war revenure tax was imposed the woman purchased a supply of stamps, and since that time has been affixing them regularly to the whiskey which she sold to the mountaineers.

Mahala Mullins buried two sons and a husband in the lot in front of her house, where she could sit in the doorway and see the graves.  She had lived alone for the last two years.

---

THE MEXICAN HERALD  
September 18, 1898
-----------------------------
COULD NOT ARREST HER
----------------
Famous Moonshiner Dead. Defied Law Officers From A Mountain Top
------------
Knoxville, Tenn Sept 17

News has just been reached here of the death of Mahala Mullins, the famous fat woman and moonshiner of Hancock County. Mrs Mullins weighed 500 pounds and lived on top of a mountain, where she conducted a "still" in defiance of the law.  The officers were unable to arrest her on account of her size, there being no way to get her down the mountain.  Mrs. Mullins is one of a tribe of Melungeons who's origins have been a mystery to ethnological students for many years.

---

HOME MISSION MONTHLY

 A Visit To The Melungeons
 C.H. Humble  ~ 1897

"The most noted person now among them is Mrs. Mehala Mullens, widow of John Mullens.  About twenty children were born to this couple, three of whom met violent deaths, ons son being shot in the streets of Sneedville, another in her door yard, and a third lynched in Texas.

She is over seventy years old; weighs, it is judged, about 400 pounds; cannot walk, stand, or lie down; but sits on her bed day and night. Beside her is a cask of whiskey on which stand tin cups and measures.  The faucet is at her hand that she may conveniently dispense liquor to all who want it.

She seems to enjoy the notoriety, and when the officers came with a writ for her arrest, she laughingly said “Execute it!" Her size, ill health, and steep rocky roads leading to her house on Newman’s Ridge, rendered her transportation dangerous if not impossible; so she sits and sells in defiance of law. I asked what she was going to do with all the fruit in the large orchard?  She replied, “The boys know how to work that up.”  I presumed into apple brandy, and she will do the rest.

She was quite willing to have her picture taken, but wanted a copy of it.  When Mr. Hamilton asked for her address her daughter interposed.  “You did not tell him how many yards it takes,” and turning, said: “ It takes twelve yards to make her a dress.”  The old lady saw her daughter’s mistake and corrected it, otherwise Mr. H. might have taken the order.

Privately, I said, “Why do you, so near the grave, go on selling this destructive stuff to the young men?”  She replied, “It’s the only way I can make a livin’.”  She would only half promise to think of the evil of it.  The old sentiment of the people makes it innocent, the notoriety makes it pleasant, and the money makes it profitable, and habit blinds her to the curse it has brought to her own door.

---

SHE SELLS MOUNTAIN DEW

BROAD AX
SALT LAKE CITY
4/10/1897

When the revenue Officers Come to Arrest Her She Says, “Take Me”

From the Atlanta Constitution:

Betsy Mullens is the largest woman in Tennessee. She lives in a little log house on top of Newman’s Ridge, in the mountains of Hancock County, where she earns a living by the sale of illicitly distilled whiskey in open defiance of the government officers, who have time and again been sent to arrest her, but have never been successful. Her avoirdupois is about 540 pounds, and this accounts for the woman never having bee arrested. It was in the fall of the year just passed that I visited the Mullens home, in company with the revenue officers from Knoxville.

The place where she lives is sixteen miles from the railroad, and by no means easy of access. As you near the foot of the ridge where the woman lives you can see her cabin on the top.

A conveyance cannot wend its way to the home, and those who wish to see the largest woman in Tennessee, and one who has caused more talk than any other woman in the state, have to leave their conveyance behind and make it on foot up the steep mountain side. Approaching the house, the first thing out of the ordinary which attracted my attention were four mounds in the back yard, which, upon inquiry, I learned, were the graves of her husband and three sons, the latter having given up their lives in mountain fights and had been buried in the yard, where the mother could turn from her bed in the little house and gaze at the spots which contained beneath their grassy sod all that was mortal of those who were so near and dear to her.

For years the woman has been bedridden. Not that she is sick, but her immense size is such that she is unable to walk or move around like other people. Her husband was for years an invalid, and the family was without visible means of support until Betsy conceived the idea of selling whisky. There are any number of illicit stills in the mountains near by, and just across the line in Kentucky, and with their operators Betsy made arrangements for her supply of “mountain dew.” It is brought to her in stone jugs, and from her bedside she can reach down and pour out any amount of whisky which the patrons of her place may desire. In open defiance of the law has Mrs. Mullens carried on this method of liquor selling for years.

The federal grand jury has indicted her time after time, and officers have been sent to arrest her, but that was all. They would come to her bedside and serve the papers, but could not take her to court or to jail. Her size baffled them. It would take half a dozen strong men to carry her out of the house and when the outside was reached they would not be able to get her to the road at the bottom of the ridge, as it is impossible to get a wagon to the top, where her cabin is located. Every time the officers call at the house she simply laughs and says, “Take me if you can.” The officers cannot take her and that is the end of it.

In Mrs. Mullens will be found the personifications of ignorance. Her knowledge of the world is confined to a radius of three miles of her home. She was born near the place where she lives, and has never been of off the ridge. Never saw the little county town of Tazewell, the county seat of Tazewwell county, and has never seen a railway train, although she is at present nearing the fiftieth milestone of her monotonous life. She delights in having visitors call to see her and talks interestingly. During all the years that Mrs. Mullens has been confined to her bed she has seen her three sons and husband pass to the beyond.

She could not attend the funeral services at the little church, which is situated several miles from her home, and the funeral services if such they might be called were held in the rooms where the mother and wife lay on the bed, and their bodies were laid to rest just outside the door in the back yard, where she could witness the interment. The woman takes her misfortune good naturedly, and says that she will continue the sale of whisky until her time to die has come, and then she too expects to be laid to rest beside the bodies of her husband and sons in the little plot in the back yard, known as the family burying ground of the Mullens family.

---

The Most Famous Melungeon

Mahala Mullins    
               

               
       
Massilion Independent
10/21/1897

HER FAT IS HER FORTUNE

Why Mary Mullins Sells Moonshine Whisky With Impunity

Once again Mary Mullins is driving the revenue officers of Tennessee to desperation. She is making moonshine whisky and selling the same and doing both openly and defiantly. A dozen warrants have been issued for her arrest. A dozen revenue officers have started out to serve them and conduct Mary in triumph to jail. Mary invariably has received warrants and officers in person and with hospitable welcome. “The warrants are correct.” she invariably says “I am guilty as charge. I am yours. Take me.”

And not an officer yet has been found who was capable of taking her at her word or taking her in any other way. For the fact is Mary tips the beam at 690 pounds, and, furthermore, she has so outgrown the width of any door in the house in which she lives that to get her out of doors would involve a technical tearing down of the house over head. This the revenue officers have no authority to do. So they merely walk around Mary in dumb despair. They are absolutely helpless to enforce the law. Mary’s fat cheeks quiver with the husky chuckles which with her pass for a laugh and urges the minions of the law to do was the law directs.

“Why don’t you do your duty?” she asks in her fat, wheezy voice. “I’ve been selling moonshine right along. Goin to do it ag’in too, soon’s you uns gits out er sight. Why don’t yon take me: I’m all yourn–about 700 pounds of me. Take me along with you now.”

Thus does Mary tantalize Uncle Sam’s excise men until they go off in despair, leaving Mrs Mullins mistress of the situation.

It is on a lonely mountain in Hancock County, Tenn., that Mrs. Mullins has her abode. She has lived there all her life, and never has seen even so much as a village.