MELUNGEONS
COPIED FROM FROM WIKIPEDIA
Written by armchair authors who copy and paste cherry picked data to suit their theories.
For Melungeon Disinformation - See Wikipedia
"Melungeans, Melungins, Melungeons are a group of people from Appalachia who predominantly descend from Northern or Central European women and sub-Saharan African men."
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This is from the HALF TESTED Melungeons by four authors whose aim was to author, along with Jill Lackey, books, documentaries etc., on the AFRICAN HERITAGE OF THE MELUNGEONS when the DNA PROJECT was barely a year old. I, Joanne Pezzullo was co-founder of this project from the beginning, with Jack Goins, Penny Feruguson and Janet Crain. I was the genealogist of the project, all surnames were researched by me. I quit in 2008-2009 in disgust as the project became 'shady'. My replacement, Kathy James also quit in disgust. See my review where I show from 2005 to 2012 when the paper was published that barely HALF the surnames listed, according to them, belonged in the project WERE NOT TESTED and not part of the data release.
In 2011, Estes, Goins, Ferguson, and Crain founded the Melungeon DNA Project. They reported that the Melungeon lines had likely originated in the unions of black and white indentured servants living in Virginia in the mid-17th century before slavery became widespread in the United States.[10] They concluded that as laws to prevent the mixing of races were put into place, those family groups intermarried with one another creating an endogamous group.
This is the worse part of the Wikipedia article. Much of Wikipedia is taken from the shoddy DNA study in 2012.
Jack Goins and Roberta Estes both admitted what was printed in the paper was errouneous - that in fact the results were Half European and Half African. You cannot take a European man married to a'white indenture servant and have an African baby.
Jack Goins blog (Jack criticizing Joanne 😏 Just threee years after he reported their ancestors were African men and European women:
"Those results plainly show an almost even mixture of European and African males and all the maternal test were European".
https://tinyurl.com/yckyt8kn
Roberta Estes on the 2012 DNA Study
"The AP picked up on the paper and set about to write their own article. They did a pretty good job, all things considered, except for a typo or two (death years pertaining to photos should have been in the 1900s, not 1800s) and one slight error (the Melungeon male lines who tested were both African and European)"
They promised an update in 2012, eleven years ago, I have not seen one, have you?
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"Initially, a generalized pejorative racial slur, Melungeon became associated with 40 families living in East Tennessee and Southwest Virginia.[1][2][3] Neighboring Melungeon settlements may have included the Cumberland Gap area of central Appalachia, which includes portions of eastern Kentucky."
This paragraph is absolutely off the charts when it comes to even the slightest bit of research.
It was not intitially a racial slur, it was given to a group of 50 mixed families living on the Pee Dee River in 1754 most of whom came from Charles City County as Indian traders with mixed families. These families, because of the 'laws in South Carolina left the state, settling in SW Virginia, East Tennessee, Kentucky, while some went south into Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi etc.
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"Unfounded theories of Melungeon origins that have been disproven include them having Portuguese, Native American, Turkish, or Romani ancestry. They likely made these claims to account for their dark complexion while hiding their African heritage to remain free."
DISPROVEN BY A SHODDY 2012 DNA REPORT the authors have admitted was NOT CORRECT. I have never seen any document, article, DNA etc., that has disproven Portuguese or Native American ancestry. In fact it is the opposite.
Fifty men who descend from one Gibson ancestor of Charles City County who are proven descendants of an Indian woman in a court document carry the Atlantic Modal Haplotype that is found in 90% of the men in some parts of Portugal. Very little is written on the shipload of Portuguese that came with DeSoto in 1540, or the "Lost Colony" of Lucas DeAyllon in 1527, or the court cases that decided with the Melungeons they were in fact descended from Portuguese ancestors.
http://www.khazaria.com/genetics/portuguese.html
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"The earliest historical record of the term Melungeon dates to 1813. In the minutes of the Stoney Creek Baptist Church in Scott County, Virginia, a woman stated another parishioner made the accusation that "she harbored them Melungins."
The search for the original document held by the Boatwater family in the 1960s was hunted down by Jack Goins, ask him if it mentioned the Melungins or the McLungs
Charles and Hugh McClung owned 57,000 acres in Russell/Scott County they were buying up all the land because for the COAL. They were land grabbers 1812-1813 and the people at that church knew it.
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"On November 10, 1935, The Nevada State Journal wrote: "Melungeons are a distinct race of people living in the mountains of eastern Tennessee. They are about the color of mulattoes but have straight hair."[8][better source needed]
More opinions
Solomon's father Spencer Bolton was born on the Pee Dee River in 1735 thus one of the mixed families found there in 1754. His daughter was proved to be of Portuguese descent in Hamilton County Court - upheld in the Supreme Court. He, along with the GOINS PERKINS SHOEMAKE etc remain the only identified Melungeons in a court case.
Q. What was the color of Solomon Bolton? Was it not that of a mulatto or half breed negro?
A. He was dark skinned.
Q. Was he not darker than a dark skinned white man, and was not the color different to that of a dark skinned white man and did he not look like a mulatto?
A. He was darker than a dark skinned white man, but I never thought his color looked like a mulatto or negro, but thought it looked like Spaniard. I have saw one or two Spaniards in my life time.
Q. State whether or not you know of any of Bolton's family-- his father or other in the state of North Carolina or other place
A. I was in So Carolina once and saw his father. I knew most of his family. I was on business in So Carolina. His father, or a man claiming to be his father came to me to inquire after his son Solomon Bolton whom he said was living in this County
Q. State whether or not the father of Solomon Bolton was regarded and treated as a citizen of South Carolina, or as a colored man? You will also state his church relations-to what church he belonged and how he was received by society, so far as you were able to determine.
A. They told me there that he was a very respectable citizen there. I asked if he was not a colored man and they told me he was not, but was a Portagese. The told me that he was a member of Baptist Church there in good standing and was received in good society. I saw nothing to the contrary.
Goodspeeds HISTORY OF TENNESSEE - 1886
"A settlement was also made at an early date at Mulberry Gap, where a little village sprang up. Newmans' Ridge, which runs through the county to the north of Sneedville, and parallel with Clinch river, is said to have taken its name from one of the first settlers upon it. It has since been occupied mainly by a people presenting a peculiar admixture of white and Indian blood."
There are HUNDREDS of articles on who, where etc were the Melungeons, what color were they. Read who their neighbors, attorneys, tax men etc had to say, not some 1935 Nevada newspaper.
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"Racial laws and court cases
Melungeon ancestors were considered by appearance to be mixed race. During the 18th and the early 19th centuries, census enumerators classified them as "mulatto," "other free," or as "free persons of color." Sometimes they were listed as "white" or sometimes as "black" or "negro," but almost never as "Indian".
'Never as "Indian"
They snuck that 'almost' in there 😃
"An examination of the annual census records from 1860 to 1890 shows the beginnings of the enumeration of Native Americans in the census. Article I, section 2, of the Constitution requires a census to be taken every 10 years so that seats in the House of Representatives can be apportioned among the states. Section 2 excludes "Indians not taxed"—those Indians living on reservations or those roaming in unsettled areas of the country.
The first federal decennial census that clearly identifies any Native Americans is the 1860 census .1 The instructions to the 1860 census enumerators defined who was to be counted and who was not:
Indians not taxed are not to be enumerated. The families of Indians who have renounced tribal rule, and who under state or territory laws exercise the rights of citizens, are to be enumerated.
In 1890, the Census Bureau made an effort to count all Indians, both taxed and untaxed, and the results were published in extensive monographs focused on the population
Report on Indians Taxed and Indians Not Taxed in the United States (except. Alaska) at the Eleventh Census: 1890.
Washington, DC: US Census Printing Office
In a number of states small groups of people, preferring the freedom of the woods or the seashore to the confinement of regular labor in civilization, have become in some degree distinct from their neighbors, perpetuating their qualities and absorbing into their number those of like disposition, without preserving very clear racial lines. Such are the remnants called Indians in some states where a pure-blooded Indian can hardly longer be found. In Tennessee such a group, popularly known as Melungeans, in addition to those still known as Cherokee.
On one census in the 1900s the entire Pamunkey Tribe in Virginia were marked as 'B' or 'M' they sued the census bureau and won.
1900 Census
INSTRUCTIONS FOR FILLING THIS SCHEDULE
This modified form of Schedule No 1 is to be used in making the enumertion of Indians, both those on the reservations and those living in family groups outside of reservations.
Detached Indians living either in white or negro families outside of reservations should be enumerted on the general populaton schedule (Form 7-224) as members of the families in which they are found: but detached whites or negroes living in Indian families should be enumerated on this schedule as members of the Indian families in which they are found. In other words, every family composed mainly of Indians should be reported entirely on this schedule and every family composed mainly of person not Indian should be reported entirely on the general population schedule.
http://www.historical-melungeons.com/mag_indians.html
Although they are descendants of the Melungeons identified as Cherokee in 1890 census and also listed as Cherokee Indians in 1900 Government Documents they were rejected in the Eastern Cherokee Rolls.
I bet you didn't know the Eastern Cherokee were denied the same annuities and trust funds as the Oklahoma tribe. Chief Nimrod Smith [reported to be a Portuguese Cherokee] sued the Government in 1885, the following year the US Supreme Court ruled:
" that the Eastern Cherokee had dissolved their connection with the Cherokee Nation by their refusal to move west. The decision deprived them not only of the trust and annuity funds but also of their tribal status and consequently left them in an extremely ambiguous legal position."
As my grampa would say. Don't that just beat all. https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2006/summer/indian-census.html
