Chippoakes Creek Families

Chippoakes Creek Families

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The red dot is Upper Chippoakes Creek.  Note the the Quiyoughcohannocks on one side of the James and the  Paspahegh on the other side.  The first Gibsons lived on or very near to the Quiyoughcohannocks and were buried on the lands that belonged to the Paspahegh Tribe.

The records below will show that George Gibson, Thomas Gibson, Thomas Chivers/Chavis, 'Peter' Gibson, Thomas Busby, John Collins, Robert Sweat and Adam and Gilbert Ivey are all found on Chippoakes Creek. Thomas Busby was Indian Interpreter for the Crown [In 1712 “Gilbert Ivy and Adam Ivy being brought before this Board and examined on Suspition of trading with the Tuscaruro Indians contrary to the orders and proclamation prohibiting that Trade,” [sons of Adam and Elizabeth Ivey] and at least one Ivey has DNA results that match the Busby. The Busby, Gibson, Collins, Caufields and Ivey were neighbors on Chippoakes Creek. 

Indians on the Upper Chippokes Creek:

William Knott, 312 Acres, Surry Co 28 Mar 1666, p. 482 (land patents). 112 acres on south side of James River on south side of Upper Chipoake Creek, bounded NW on land of Edward Oliver, N upon Wm. Thomas, E on George Gibson [See Indian Jane Gibson of Charles City County]  SE on Mr. Fisher; 200 acres on south side of said River, Wly. on Jeremiah Clements, NW on Edward Oliver, Nly on Wm. Thomas, George Gibson & Edward Minter, Ely. on Wm. Gapins land & Mr. Thomas Busbie and SE on Mr. Richard Hill

The Quiyoughcohannock were one of the first Virginia Indian groups the English encountered in 1607 after landing at Jamestown. Situated primarily in present-day Surry County, the Quiyoughcohannocks had four villages in the region likely east of Upper Chippokes Creek. The Quiyoughcohannocks in 1608/09 escorted Nathaniel Powell and Anas Todkill southward in an unsuccessful attempt to locate survivors of the Roanoke Colony. The English observed a part of a ritual initiation into manhood, the huskanaw, at a Quiyoughcohannock village in 1608.

Claremont Manor is in Surry County, Virginia, on the south shore of James River at its confluence with Upper Chippokes Creek. It was in the area occupied by the Quiyoughcohannock Indians when George Harrison received a grant of land there is 1621. 

Southwark Parish was created in 1647 and described as encompassing all the territory extending from "the colledge" [College Creek] to (and including) the Upper Chipoaks [Upper Chippokes Creek]

A List of ye Tythables from ye Colledge to Smiths forte taken ye 10th of June 1668 by Mr. Thos. Warren:

Tho. Hurle   Joh. Shipp  Tho Gibson & 1 negro, 04
Edmond Howel l 01

Elizabeth Chavis on 28 March 1672 made a successful petition to the General Court of Virginia to release her son, Gibson Gibson, who had been unlawfully bound by Berr. Mercer to Thomas Barber who had gone to England leaving the boy with Samuel Austin [McIlwaine, Minutes of the Council, 302-3].  While it has been published to somehow show the Gibson and Chavis must have been of African descent by Paul Heinegg I suspect Mr., Heinegg was not aware of this law on the book, or chose to ignore it.  

In 1655 provision was made that Indian children could become indentured servants only by consent of their parents and for specified terms agreed upon and such children were to be educated in the Christian religion.

In Virginia, 1656, it was provided that Indian children brought into the colony as hostages should be assigned to masters by choice of their parents, but should not be made slaves. Again, in 1658, it was decreed that any Indian children disposed of by their parents to a white man for “education and instruction in the Christian religion”, or for any other purpose, were not to be turned over to any other person upon any pretext whatever

It certainly appears that Gibson Gibson would fall under this law when he was turned over to Samuel Austin, the recent find of "Indian Jane Gibson" court documents show the Gibson in Charles City County were known as Indians as early as 1640.

1676 List of the Names and some of the Residences of the Rebel Participants in Bacon's Rebellion of 1676 in Colonial Virginia [Bacon's Castle - home of Arthur Allen - Claremont] 

Edmund Howell - Surry - Southwark Parish
Thomas Gibson - Surry - Southwark Parish 

Edmund Howell -- 23 Dec. 1679 
To my only son, William Howell my whole estate with some exceptions. to my godson Gibson, son of Thomas Gibson To godson Henry Baker. Makes George Foster Exec. and gives him the care of son until he is 21 years old, If son die, his inheritance to Henry Baker, GeorgeFoster Thomas Ironmonger his children.
Wit: Thos Pittan, Sr., John Moring. Prob. 9 Oct. 1679.(2:240) 

Gibby Gibson 
In the Sandy Point Cemetery, Charles City County; (Home of the Paspahegh Indians) - (See map above)

Here Lyes the Body of FRANCIS GIBSON
Here Lyes the Body of GIBBY GIBSON
Here Lyes the Body of THOMAS GIBSON


Will of Gibby Gibson of Charles City Co. , "very weak'.

My riding horse to be sold to pay Col. Lightfoot.
To Hannah Dennam, my negro boy Jack, for life, and then to my son Gibby Gibson.

To wife Francis: my negro girl Vicky, for life, and then to my daughter Fran: Smith ( Francis would later marry and move from Bertie County with second husband William Chavis and is found on the lands of William Eaton - Saponi? in 1754)

To my son in law George Smith, 2 negroes - Sovilaty and Jin.
To Hannah Dennam, my negro boy Peter for life and then to my daughter Fran Smith

To my son Edward Gibson, my negro Judey, my wearing clothes, carpenters tools, and coopers tools

To George Smith, 2 sheets, 2 blankets and a rugg

To Tabitha Rollinson, negro girl Nanny. [ Also moved to the lands of William Eaton from Bertie County]

George Smith to take care of my cattle and they are to be divided equally between my wife and granddaughter Sarah Smith.

To wife my two working Horses and hoggs.
Rest of my estate to George Smith and he to be executor , Dated 2 March 1726/7
Witt: Benja. Moody, Robert Cade,(*) James Blankes
Signed: Gibby(G) Gibson
Codicil: Negro boy Peter given in will to Hannah Dennam and then to Frances Smith, is to go to my son George Gibson
3 March 1726/27 Wit: by above Moody and Cade
Recorded 3 May 1727 Presented by George Smith and proved by above Blanks and Cade. Col. Fran's Lightfoot, Security.

After Gibby died some of the family started leaving Virginia. Frances who had married George Smith and later William Chavis, Tabitha who married George Rollinson, John Gibson and Gideon Gibson are in Bertie County, Hubbard Gibson and his family also moved to Bertie County before they all seemed to have moved on. Some in Granville and Orange Co., N.C and others to the Pee Dee.  
November 1741 the court presented George Gibson and George Gibson, Jr., for not going to church. In July 1745 Phillis Goeing (Gowen) petitioned him concerning her children, but he failed to answer the petition so the court ordered the churchwardens to bind them out. (It is likely this George Gibson Sr., is the son of Gibby Gibson who left the 1727 will in Charles City County. 


(*) Robert Cade was the witness on will of Gibby Gibson 1727 in Charles City County, Virginia. This is likely Robert Cade who married Susannah Crump, son Stephen Crump Cade born September 17, 1715 St Peters Parish, New Kent County, Virginia. Stephen Crump Cade resided in lived in Edgecombe, Dobbs, and was Sheriff of Johnston Co. in 1757, married to Mary Wadill and Mary Gibson and died in Robeson Co., North Carolina in 1783. His son John Cade married to Elizabeth Adair, daughter of the Indian trader and author Doctor James Adair of Robeson County, North Carolina. Elizabeth's sister, Agnes married to John Gibson who is said to have been killed by Indians near Nashville in 1790.

15 Sep 1769 James IVEY of Bladen Co to James Adair, doctor, 200 acres in the fork of the Little Pedee River, on the east side of Mitchells Creek being land granted to Jordan Gibson on 1 July 1758, conveyed to John Wootan on 25 September 1761 then to Ben Davis on 16 July 1762 then to James Ivey on 26 July 1766. (See Ivey below)

The Gibsons of Louisa County, later called Melungeons, and the Gibsons of Pee Dee share a common ancestor proven by DNA match.


CHAVIS 


Thomas Chivers was appointed to a jury of twelve men in Isle of Wight County on 28 July 1658 to determine whether 900 acres belonged to Major Nicholas Hill or to John Snollock [VMHB V:406]. He purchased 1,100 acres of land at the head of Sunken Marsh near Chipoakes Creek in Surry County, Virginia, on 20 May 1659 for two cows, payment of 4,000 pounds of tobacco in October that year, and payment of 4,000 pounds of tobacco in October 1660. He died sometime before 13 April 1664 when his daughter Elizabeth was bound out until she came of age [DW 1:151; Haun, Surry County Court Records, I:149; II:232]. 

Thomas CheversChavis purchased 1,100 acres of land at the head of Sunken Marsh near Chippoakes in Surry Co. Virginia - 1659  These Chavis descendants also went to Bertie Co., NC and then to Granville where they were apparently one of the 15 Saponi Indians living on William Eaton's land.
CHEVERS/SHIVERS FAMILY - CHRONICLES AND CONNECTIONS - By Thom Montgomery, PhD


IVEY

Adam Ivey was a small-scale tenant farmer, almost certainly growing tobacco. Fifty acres was a small landholding, but a single field worker was capable of managing only three or four acres of tobacco in those days. Fifty acres was a typical holding for a planter with only himself to work the fields.[5] His location can be approximated, since nearly all the persons mentioned in these records lived south of the James River in the neck of land bounded by Upper Chippoakes Creek and Wards Creek. This neck included what was later the parish of Martins Brandon, in which Adam Ivey apparently lived at his death, in what would later become Prince George County. It was quite close to Surry County, Upper Chippoakes Creek being the later boundary between Prince George and Surry.

History of the Adam Ivey Family


The DNA evidence shows that the Ivys, Iveys and Ivies are related to the Busbices/Busbys/Buzbees in the male line. The Ivy male line's "Busby" DNA could have resulted from an Ivy adoption of a male Buzbee, or a Busby male could have been the father of a male Ivy. Ivey and Busby



“After seeing the latest Y-DNA results, it appears that it's highly probable that the Benjamin Busby line and one of the Ivey/Ivie/Ivy lines are entangled, most likely in very early Colonial Virginia. One of the Busby/Busbice/Buzbee male descendants is matching 66/67 markers with what we believe to be the Adam Ivie line of Charles City/Prince George Co, VA" - Jerry Ivey - Here


Thomas Busby (born about 1674) was an “Indyan boy” servant to Mr. Robert Caufield of Surry Co. VA in July of 1684 when his age was adjudged at 10 years (Haun, Surry County Records 1682-91, 444) - This Thomas Busby is likely named after Thomas Busby the interpreter for the crown mentioned in records of George Gibson in 1666. Could this Thomas Busby "Indyan boy" be the Ivey DNA match?

Surry County - 5 Mar 1688/89 Book 4 p108 Robert Caufield 680a where I lately lived and known as Sunken Marsh. ( Thomas Chavis land was also on Sunken Marsh -see above)

1684 Upper Sunken Marsh
p.46, Mr. Tho: Busby, Peter Gibson, Con & Ann two Indyans - 4


Will of Capt. Robert Caufield, of Lawne's Creek parish, Surry county: Names niece Elizabeth, wife of William Holt, niece Mary, wife of James Bruton, nephew John Seward; legacy to Mary, dau. of Charles Williams; to Mrs. Mary Holt 15L Page 311. sterl.; legacies to Frances, dau. of Francis Mason, Elizabeth, dau. of Arthur Allen, to Katherine and James, children of Arthur Allen, (Arthur Allen was owner of Bacon's Castle) to Mrs. Elizabeth Holt, Wm. Hancocke and his wife, to Samuel Newton and John Collins, wife Elizabeth. Dated Jan. 2, 1691; proved Jan. 19, 1691. [Capt. Robert Caufield was son of William Caufield, of the parish of Chippoakes, Surry county, and Doreas, his wife.



22 Jul 1743 Jno. Collins enters 200 acres in Craven County on south side of Contentnea Creek bordering Thomas Ivi’s line and runs up the creek… [North Carolina Land Entries 1735-1752, A. B. Pruitt, p44]

This may refer to the land granted to Thomas Ivey the following year. Thus, this may be the first sighting of the Thomas Ivey who was in Bladen County later this year. The name on the warrant at the Archives is very difficult to read and may be “Ive” or “Ivi” or “Ives” or something else entirely.



1 Dec 1744 Grant: Thomas Ivey, 300 acres in Craven County on the south side Great Contentnea Creek on the Mirey branch. [Colony of NC 1735-1764 Abstracts of Land Patents, Margaret M. Hofman, Vol. 1, p11, Grant #2721]


23 Oct 1754 Granville Grant: Adam Ivey, 285 acres in Edgecombe County on Contentnea Creek joining Ivey’s Meadow and John Haywood. Survey for Adam Ivey dated 4 September 1753, chain carriers: Joshua Lee, Peter Bass. [Patent Book 11, p211]

This is actually on Little Contentnea Creek. “Ivey’s Meadow” clearly implies that he already owned adjoining land.





SWEAT

Leift. Robert Sheppard due 650 acres of land in James City Co., 26 July 1638, for transporting 13 persons ... the list includes Robert Swett. The land granted to Robert Sheppard at this time was on the south bank of the James River at Chippokes Creek. [Nugent, p. 584] [Nugen t, Nell Marion, "Cavaliers & Pioneers, Abstracts of Virginia Land Paten ts and Grants 1623-1666" (1934, Genealogical Publishing Company reprint 19 69), p. 94] . 

17 October 1640: James City Court: "Whereas Robert Sweat hath begotten with child a negro woman servant (not slave) belonging unto Lieutenant Sheppard, the court hath therefore ordered that the said negro woman shall be whipt at the whipping post and the said Sweat shall tomorrow in the forenoon do public penance for his offence at James City church in the time of divine service according to the laws of England in that case provided." [Virginia Council and General Court Records 1640-1641, in "Virginia Magazine of History" Vol. II, p. 281] This was a general law against fornication that applied to all members of the colony. 


CHIPPOAKES CREEK TO BLADEN COUNTY

1754 Governor Dobbs requested reports from the militia commanders of North Carolina’s counties. The Bladen militia submitted the following: “Col. Rutherford’s Regimt. of Foot in Bladen County 441, a Troop of horse 36... Drowning Creek on the Head of Little Peedee, 50 families, a mixt Crew, a lawless People, filleth the Lands without patent or paying quit rents. Shot a surveyor for coming to view vacant lands being inclosed in great swamps. Quakers to attend musters or pay as in the Northern Counties. Fines not high enough to oblige the militia to attend musters. No arms stores or Indians in the county.” [Colonial Records of North Carolina, Vol. V, p161 

A number of ethnologists, archeologists, historians, etc., have identified these 50 mixt families living on Drowning Creek as the ancestors of the Lumbee Indians. So who was living in Bladen County in 1754? The records show that these families who would later be called Lumbee, Melungeons, etc., were, in fact, living on Drowning Creek - Pee Dee River area in 1754. 

27 August 1753, John Johnson Jr. entered 100 acres in Bladen County, North Carolina on the north side of Pugh's marsh whereon John Oxendine was then living. (Bladen County Land Entries #805). In 1759 , he and two of his sons, John and Benjamin, lived in the Drowning Creek area of Bladen County, North Carolina which is the upper part of the Lumbee River area. The Oxendine, Ivey and Linegar are found on Newman's Ridge. 

Moses Bass was living near "the drains of Drowning Creek" on 1 February 1754 when Robert Carver entered 100 acres there [Philbeck, Bladen County Land Entries, nos. 677, 934] 

Thomas Ivey 300 acres on Drowning Creek where James Roberts formerly lived on 26 September 1755 [Philbeck, Bladen County Land Entries, nos. 974, 1048].

Robert Sweat was granted 100 acres on Wilkerson Swamp near the Little Pee Dee River on 23 Dec 1754. This land adjoined the land of Joshua Perkins and was sold toPhillip Chavis. 

Gilbert Sweat Case…21 Aug. 1829…St. Landry’s Parish LA… Testimony of Joshua Perkins – Gilbert Sweat was born about 1756 in what was then Marion Co. SC on the Pee Dee River. About the year 1777, Perkins helped Sweat run away with Frances Smith, the wife of J.B. Taylor. Sweat moved from SC to Tenn, to NC to Big Black River, Miss. And arrived in LA in 1804. 

31 Mar 1753 Grant: To Daniel Willis, 300 acres in Bladen County on Saddletree Swamp adjacent Thomas Ivey [Colony of NC 1735-1764 Abstracts of Land Patents, Margaret M. Hofman, Vol. 1, p10, grant #111]

17 November 1753 Bladen County land which had been surveyed for Gideon Gibsonin North Carolina on the north side of the Little Pee Dee River was mentioned in a Bladen County land entry [Philbeck, Land Entries: Bladen County, no. 904]. 

20 Feb 1754 Land Entry: Thomas Ivey enters 150 acres including his own improvements, on the 5 Mile Branch in Bladen County. [North Carolina Land Entries 1753-1756, A. B. Pruitt, Vol. 2, p127] (From BOB'S FILING CABINET) 

Fayetteville, North Carolina --- Dec. 2, 1845 -- Extreme Old Age -- A writer in the Highland Messenger says he had just visited Spencer Bolton, a resident of Buncombe county, who is now almost one hundred and ten years of age! He was born (1735) on Big Pee Dee River, in South Carolina, and is still sound in mind and body. He was in several skirmishes under Marion in the Rebolutionary war. Has been for 65 years a member of the Methodist Church. Health generally good. In early life, principal diet bread, rice, potatoes, and milk; slept on straw beds; generally up before day-light; and much accustomed to bathe in cold water. To the influence of these habits he ascribes his long life. Spencer Bolton is father of Solomon Bolton who was identified as a Portuguese/Melungeon in 1874 court case.

These are the families first found on Chippoakes Creek, as they spread out into the Carolinas, Kentucky, Tennessee etc.

Molungeons Mulungeons & Others

THE MOLUNGEONS OF VIRGINIA

Were the Melungeons really found first on Newmans Ridge in East Tennessee?  Were they really the only group of people called Melungeon, Melungin, Malungeon etc.,  or were they recognized in many places as Melungeons before the Tennessee group settled on Newmans Ridge?

There are dozens of references to the Molungeons in the newspapers in 

Virginia [particularly in Staunton] as early as 1856 into the 1900s. 

 Yet in 2014 I contacted the Library of Virginia Reference Desk and spoke to William C. Luebke, Reference Librarian, about the Molungeons.  He had never heard of them but said he would do a search, he found nothing, none of his colleagues had heard of the term either.  Nothing has been recorded of this group of people found throughout the newspapers.

Who Are These Molungeons of Virginia

Shortly after the birth of the Republican Party a Convention was held in Philadelphia.  It was a very important time in the history of our country. To read more on this see Republican Platform of 1856

--- The platform of Feb 1856 which expunged and ignored the 12th section and in a letter which goes expressly for restoring the Missouri Compromise. The Mulungeons of Richmond endorsed the 'late convention' at Philadelphia too; but will any southern man-- a Stuart or an Imobdin even -- endorse this letter for the restoration of the Missouri Compromise.'' 

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These Articles listed below mention the Molungeons of Virginia.  Can there be any difference in the Melungeons of North Carolina or Tennessee?

  

Under UNCONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION in the

 STAUNTON SPECTATOR dated February 25, 1868

Afternoon Session

That is the State of Virginia recognizing these Molungeons as neither white, mulatto or negro but in a class of their own. 

______________________ 

From the Richmond Whig. Letter from Hon. John M. Botts
Date: March 26, 1859
Location: Maryland
Paper: Easton Gazette
Article type: Letters

......when the Sheriff came to count up the votes at the close of the polls, they counted but five -- and if I had received the vote of one ''Molungeon,'' and he had been authorized by the Constitution to vote, and had 'had' a majority of only one--- it would have been difficult to tell, whether I was most indebted for my election to the "Molungeon" or to the Chief Justice of the U.S.; and if my competitor had received six "Molungeon" votes, or the votes of six worthless and degraded locofocos (supposing they could be any such) they would have more than balanced these five of the first men of the State could boast...........

_____________________________________________

THE ORATORICAL OGRES AT WORK
GOGGIN SWALLOWED WHOLE

Date: March 28, 1859 
Location: Alabama Paper: Daily Confederation

Thirteen congressional electors, fifty senatorial electors, and three hundred and sixty county electors have been notified to hold themselves in readiness to repel the Dragoon of Rockbridge. Botts too, will dash to the rescue at the head of a noble band of "Molungeons and Eboshins" as soon as the weather becomes sufficiently warm to render his odoriferous forces efficient.

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The Slave Power; its Character, Career, and Probable Designs. By JE...

Continental monthly: devoted to... - Cornell University - Jan 1, 1863

"Whether their own children were sold may be imagined from an anecdote long current in Virginia, relative to ex-Governor Wise, who, in a certain law case where he was opposed by a Northern trader, decided of a certain slave, that the chattel, being a mulatto, was of more value than 'a molungeon.' And what, in the name of God, is a molungeon?' inquired the astonished 'Northern man." 'A mulatto' replied Wise, ' is the child of a female house-servant by 'young master' --a molungeon is the offspring of a field hand by a Yankee peddler."

Mr. Cairnes has, no doubt, not often heard of mulattoes--they constitute the great majority of Virginia slaves. But did he ever hear of a 'molungeon'?

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From Our Own Correspondent Fredericksburg,
 January 10, 1864
"the "Government organ," however, announces that the observed of all observers were four negroes, "of genteel exteriour, and with the manners "of gentlemen, who joined in the throng that 'crowded the Executive Mansion, and were coridaly received by the President of the United State,'' The Molungeon Chronicle adds; -- We are not aware that anybody was hurt on the occasion, and we rejoice that we have a President who is a democrat in fact, as well as by nature."

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Utica Weekly Herald [New York]

March 29, 1864

The "Richmond Whig" makes the following comments on the last call for men.

It is certain, therefore, that the "rebels" will now back down.  Twenty millions of mongrels have undertaken to whip them.  The Yankees soon got sick of the fight, and levied on the Dutch and Irish. The resident Irish and Dutch began to flag and 75,000 Paddies were recruited in Ireland, with the approval and assistance of Earl Russel.  Then 100,000 n****** were enlisted.  And now 200,000 n******, Yankees, and other molungeons, half breeds, mestizoes, and Yaboes [Yaboes—a Davis coinage for the 70,000 Yank hoboes in the armed services] are to be drafted.  What wonder that the "rebels" are completely broken hearted?  Who blames the European by-standers for advising the "rebels" to give the cause up?

For ourselves, we are free to say that we are for peace.  We want peace. We will have it.  We must have it, on any terms?  Yes, on any terms -- which General Lee, standing in Faneuil HHall, may choose to dictate to the base born wretches who have sought to enslave us.  The game is a very pretty one as it stands.  Our enemies must be conquered by us, or conquered by Lincoln. They must make terms with gentlemen or they must make terms with a blackguard and a baboon.  Take your choice, O Yankees.

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Staunton Spectator
May 25, 1869

The Duties of Election Day(Column 01)

Summary: Declared that all eligible voters have the duty to vote on election day to ensure the defeat of certain sections of the Underwood constitution and to elect Walker as Governor. Wanted to ensure at least some form of control for white Virginians in the state.
Full Text of Article:The election which will take place on the 6th day of July next, by appointment of the President, will decide whether the people of this State are to be cursed with the Underwood abomination, called a Constitution, as it came from the hands of the Molungeon Convention, or whether it will be modified by having the test-oath and disfranchising clauses stricken out -- whether Walker or Wells will be our Governor, and whether proper men will be elected to represent the State in the Legislature.

And Tennessee & Kentucky & Alabama & South Carolina

December 1864
-- Murfreesboro, Tennessee
Battles and Sketches of the Army of Tennessee - Page 511

It soon became noised that these men were to be shot as bushwhackers General Forest informed General Rousseau, by flag of truce, that those men were his regular soldiers, and that if he shot them it would be at his peril.

The names of his soldiers were sent in, but the scout and Bose Rouss (some called him Malungeon), who had killed a Federal detective, were not mentioned in the list.

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-Thursday 2d July 1863
--Bluegrass Confederate: The Headquarters Diary of Edward O. Guerrant By Edward O. Guerrant

Came on to Mr Hortons for dinner—found him in a tornado furiosus-against Virginians, who fed his grass &c. and in ecstatic panegyrics of all Kentuckians—”all of whom were “interesting” gentlemen”—& no “malungens”. ...

_________________________________________________

On July 8, 1864 under WAR NEWS the DAILY SOUTH CAROLINIAN  writing on the battle that had taken place at Sapponi Church and Reams Station said;

"The poor negroes was the most notable feature of this great capture.  They comprised every conceivable class of the race, and as the vast throng crowded to the office of Provost Marshall Hawes yesterday afternoon, marching in open and rather promiscous order, they occupied nearly the whole of Bank Street. We notice among them the old and the young; the robust and the infirm; the quick footed and the halt; the bright mulatto clad in tawdry finery, and the ebo-shin and the "molungeon," dressed in homespun"  -----  (The quotes are in the original clipping and are not mine jp)
The question is how did this man writing in the South Carolina paper determine they were ''molungeons'' caputured that day -- and how did he determine the difference between the ''molungeon'' and the bright mulatto?  Was it the difference in their clothing -- skin color -- facial features or what?  Were these Virginia Molungeons different from the Tennessee Melungeons?  Or were they kin? 

THE EMASSEEES AND MALUNJINSOne 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 Alabama
By Alabama State Bar
Published by The Bar, 1942

Randall Lee Gibson

Poor Will Allen

Poor Will Allen.  Over the years I have been vilified for defending, publishing, and even mentioning the work of Will Allen Dromgoole.  Swan Burnett kicked it off with his research into the Melungeons in February 1889, followed by Hamilton McMillan, James Mooney, McDonald Furman and others from the Bureau of Ethnology. 

These men contributed greatly to what we know of the Melungeon history, but none of these men visited Newman's Ridge. Will Allen did.  While the rest of the country was suggesting the Melungeons were a mixture of 'white, Indian and Negro' Will Allen told the world they were wrong .... the Melungeons were Indians, looked like Indians, and lived like Indians.

When Will Allen's first article on the Malungeons appeared in 1890 it set off a firestorm.  

Hon. J. A. Cartwright, later circuit judge, wrote of a settlement in the Twenty-fourth district of Davidson County, as follows; "These people have black hair, dark brown complexion, are readily distinguishable from the mulatto, being evidently of different origin, and have distinct features, quite similar to those described by Will Allen. 

In the American of Sept.7,    "Twenty-fourth district" insisted that the Malungeons were an admixture of the white, Indian, and Negro races. He protested against "coining a new name for these amalgamationists." (If the Malungeons had heard of this last word they would have thought a new word had been coined for them.) "Will Allen" need not have gone to East Tennessee to find these people, observed this correspondent. "They are here under the very dome of the capitol. We recognize them as mulattoes on account of the fusion of Negro blood in their veins. When the fusion is slight they set up a claim of superiority and call themselves Portegee, ....

 THE TENNESSEAN (Nashville Tennessee)
Sept 09, 1890

 Will Allen Comes Back at Her Critics in Gallant Style

To the Editor of the American.

Referring to the anonymous correspondence in Sunday's AMERICAN, I wish to say a word concerning the peculiar race of people occupying an isolated ridge in eastern Tennessee.  The writer seems to think  because he cannot see the Malungeons they cannot exist.  I take it he has never seen Jesus Christ, yet we are reliably informed that he did and does exist.  As to the coinage of the name, it is not mine, and in an article sent to THE AMERICAN last Friday, and which has not yet appeared, I made mention of this fact. They do not exist, however, "under the shadow of the capitol" in spite of the emphatic ignorance which 'pardon the slang' sits so crushingly down upon everybody else's opinion.  

If the writer will take the cars to Chattanooga, Knoxville, Lone Mountain, then get a horse to Mulberry Gap, then Sneedville and sit on the courthouse step half an hour, he will soon discover whether or not the Malungeons are mulattos.  In case he should decide affirmatively I should advise him not to make the announcement until he is well out of Hancock county.  If, as he says, the Malungeons are mulattos it is a blot upon the name of Tennessee: a disgrace so black that morality would hide her face, and, leave the world forever, for these people have children of white settlers, fathers of white blood, and would silence forever the .... that dared call them mulattos.

I send with this a picture of one of them, Calloway Collins, who declares his father was a full-blooded Cherokee.  Calloway is an Indian if ever one lived on Tennessee soil.  The picture was drawn by Mr. Thos. M. Sharpe, of Nashville, and is exceedingly well done.  Calloway was a soldier belonging to the First Tennessee under Brownlow and Johnson, and today draws a pensioner for three bullet wounds.  His daughter Dorcas (one of Mr. Sharpe's drawings) speaks for herself.  The family group is from life. 

We visited this family with John Tyler, the brother of Hon. H. S. Tyler of Sneedville.  I send the pictures along with this, and my anonymous critic can see them by calling at THE AMERICAN office.
The Malungeons need no defense from me.  They can speak for themselves and all Hancock county can speak for them.  I first saw the name in the New York World, and many old gentlemen of Hancock county have corroborated the existence of the people and the correctness of the name.  And the fact that one croaker rises to dispute their existence because he has not seen them does not in the least alter the fact of their existence.

I know nothing of the people referred to as living the the 'twenty-fourth district.  I had intended visiting Mr. Cartright and asking him something of them, but work and business have prevented.  And now since an anonymous critic has entered his 'protest' I presume I had best be quiet concerning them.  The people in East Tennessee,  however, I shall insist upon their existence and for them deny the mulatto theory.  They live alone, mixing with none, and asking little.  If my critic will go and see, or will kindly sign his name, I will be very glad for any information he can give concerning them.

Will Allen 

Will Allen Dromgoole Articles

http://www.historical-melungeons.com/wad.html

Will Allen's work mentioned in US1890 Census Bureau Article

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

http://www.historical-melungeons.com/taxed.html

The Portuguese Melungeons

  

The Melungeons

From South Carolina 1526-To Eastern Tennessee 1800

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PORTUGUESE IN SOUTH CAROLINA IN 1500s

DEAYLLON   DESOTO   PARDO

Early Contacts

Legends

The Portuguese, DeSoto, The Indians & The Mixed Bloods

Bonnie Ball

BONNIE SAGE BALL

The Melungeons (Notes on the Origin of a Race) by Bonnie Ball was the first book I read back in the mid 1990s when I first started researching these families. Bonnie was born December 1901 on Wallen’s Ridge near Stickleyville, Lee County, Virginia. More on her life can be read here; Tribute to Bonnie Sage Ball by Gladys Julian Stallard.

Many articles and books have been published on the Melungeons over the years but Bonnie Ball's insight into their history, customs, etc, is invaluable as her father had grown up with them in the late 1800s and she not only knew them as a child but taught their children. Here are some excerpts from her letters in the 1990s and also from her book which can found here online The Melungeons by Bonnie S. Ball, or purchase here.


February 24, 1990
I've just read your letter which had gotten misplaced in my big pile of mail... Not that I am 88 I have had to give up most research , but I still write letters and reply to those of others, even though I cannot do much active research.

As to the Melungeons, I had known them since childhood, since my father had them living as tenants on our farm when I was 8 or 9 years old. He had grown up in the Blackwater, Va., area and known them all his life.

When the Goins family came to live on our farm their children attended our school, and after I grew up and began teaching I had them as pupils, and had even played with their children. However it never occurred to me t write about them until a Norton, Va., editor began publishing articles about them, even though he knew little about them. Then it occurred to me "why not write about them myself?" So, I wrote a brief article for the Read Magazine, which sent me $75. I began receiving letters from all over the U.S.A. I had no idea that so many people were interested. A few years later I wrote one for a magazine in Ky., then the head of the ? paid me to write one for it. And in the early 1960s I decided to put it into a booklet and I had more than 2,000 copies published.

We had the Goins family for only a year or so, but we had Gibson, and Collins families living on our [land] for several years. My mother had a Collins family there long after I grew up and married.

Other Melungeon names that I remember were; Freeman, Moore, Sexton, Minor, and Sheets. Some of the Gibsons intermarried with other families like Phillips, Fanning, and Clark. [The Fannins, known as "Fanon," were slightly related to me and one of the Collins families who educated their children in Hancock Co., Tenn. [the man was a banker] had a daughter who married my father's step sister. They had only daughters. One took over the bank after he died and another became a high school principle in Bristol, Tenn.

So this has been a fascinating subject for me and I still feel convinced that they are a mixture of Moorish, Portuguese, Croatan Indians, and a small portion of Anglo-Saxon blood that was left from the final massacre of the Roanoke Island colony in North Carolina. If not, how can we explain why they use old Elizabethan English expressions and all the older ones said they were "Porty-gee." The Portuguese who were often shipwrecked off the stormy N.C coast and chose to stay there and marry Indian women. The small segment that escaped from the final massacre by the Va., Indians evidently retained the old English words that the Melungeons used, like "Hit" [for it] "ferninst'[?] for opposite, etc. Please excuse my rambling and crooked lines.
Bonnie S. Ball


 Jan 1990

I have your material but am now 88 years old and not carrying on any further research on the Melungeons. However, I grew up with them living and working on my father farm in Lee Co, Va, and he knew them well during his youth, and I have never doubted their real origin. I have sold over 2000 copies of my booklet. A step-sister of my father married a man of that group. He attended a mission school for that group, and was president of the local bank, which was later managed by a daughter. Some of them are still in this area and have become worthwhile citizens.

A Goins man once lived on our farm with his family, a large and strong man but was married to a woman that was probably not a Melungeon Others whom I knew in childhood were named Gibson, Freeman, Collins, and Sexton, which appear to be Anglo-Saxon names. However there is no doubt that they have a Portuguese ancestry a few generations back, but they also have some Anglo-Saxon names and speech.
Bonnie S. Ball


August 1992
I have just taken the time to read all your data on the Melungeons. I guess that the mail that I have received re this subject would weigh several pounds. And truly, most of it presents new or different ideas.
In fact I grew up in Lee County, Va, when my father and mother had decided to move off the little ridge top farm, and move down into the valley among the blue grass hills and limestone springs, where we would be near a public school. There were woodland along the side and top of Powell Mountain, and he realized that if we were to continue raising cattle and sheep the wooded area along the mountain side would have to be cleared.

He had been born and reared as a boy in the 'West Blackwater section of Lee County," which adjoins Hancock County, Tenn, and was familiar as a young man with Mahala Mullins and other Melungeons. And he admitted that he had bought some of Mahala's product.

By that time he had lost his father during his childhood and his mother had remarried. So he went to live with an uncle in another valley in Lee Co, Va. Later around 1900 he bought a small farm along Wallen's Ridge where I and 3 or 4 others were born. However we were over a mile from school and attendance was difficult in winter so the bought the bluegrass land along the creek and mountainside which was rapidly growing up into a forest So dad knew some of the Melungeons he hand known as a boy on Blackwater, but they had then scattered and some were living in a remote area of Wise County known as the High Knob area Some of them had even ventured to work in a nearby coal mine, but that life apparently did not suit them very well. So he sent a man with teams of horses and wagons to move them over into Lee county to clear the mountain land of forests, and take care of his livestock. that was about 1909, and they lived in the 'shanties' on our farm for 8 or 10 years.

As they moved back into the remote areas of Wise County, Va., the forest along the mountain top began to grow and grow and by now it extends all the way down to our once vegetable garden where a brother lives.

Occasionally we read of one of their cousins who, like most Melungeon men there, did some hunting and fishing. For extra spending money and chewing tobacco "they dug and sold the dried roots of ginseng to sell (it grows in wooded areas and is claimed to have medicinal value.)

You may get tired before you read all these details. Even though several people have "stolen details" from my book, from which I have 'leased' to a Tenn. firm, I don't mind others using my material but they should, at least, ask for permission.
Bonnie S. Ball

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Some interesting excerpts from the book;

The older Melungeons insisted that they were Portuguese. I have known the Melungeons from childhood, when three families lived as tenants on my father's farm in Southwestern Virginia. Their children have been my pupils, and I have done first-hand research on their traits, customs, and past, but can give here only the proposed theories of their origin.

There is a doubtful theory that the Melungeon was a product of frontier warfare when white blood was fused with the Indian captor's and that of the Negro slave.

There also persist stories (that are recorded in history) that DeSoto visited Southwestern Virginia in the sixteenth century by way of a long chain of mountain leading into Tennessee. One ridge known as "Newman's Ridge" (which could have been "New Man's Ridge") was once the home of a teeming colony of Melungeons who were strongly believed to have descended from members of DeSoto's party lost or captured there.

In both Carolinas Melungeons were denied privileges usually granted to white people. For that reason many migrated to Tennessee where the courts ruled that they were not Negroes.

In weighing this last statement it is interesting to note that the Moors of Tennessee called themselves Portuguese, that the Moors of North Carolina came from Portugal, and that a generation ago the Melungeons called themselves Portuguese.

The Portuguese tradition seems to persist in connection with the Melungeons much more than even that of the Lost Colony.

She (Will Allen Dromgoole) gives no authority whatsoever for this tale, and further states that; "A Collins came to Newman's Ridge and reared a family by a wife whose ancestry was more vague than that of Cain's wife."

In a column called "The Southwest Conrner" published in the Roanoke News, Roanoke, Virginia, on February 25, 1934, Dr. Gooridge Wilson wrote the following .......

........"Mr. Robert Gray, one of the last survivors of those who drove the great herds of cattle, horses, and mules from the mountains to the sea, says that the Melungeons were in much demand for this work, being expert handlers of the stock on long treks...... ... when he was a boy some of the oldest of the clan told him that they were "Croatans," survivors of the Indians tribe supposed to have destroyed or absorbed Sir Walter Raleigh's Lost Colony on Roanoke Island."

Will Allen Dromgoole

One of the most discussed, and less researched, of the Melungeon's history are the articles and observations of Will Allen Dromgoole's stay on Newmans Ridge in 1890. 

Her trip was preceded by an article read before the Anthropology Society in February of 1889, "Notes On The Melungeons" by Swan Burnett and published in the American Anthropologist in October of that year. Burnett was the husband of Frances Hodgson (author of Little Lord Fauntleroy) and happened to be Editor of the Boston Globe in March of 1890, a few months before Dromgoole left for Newman's Ridge.

The Boston Weekly Globe (Boston, Massachusetts)

29  Mar 1890

Coincidence?  Perhaps?

Many people were, and are, offended by what Dromgoole wrote.  The one thing she was adamant about was they were Indians. Cherokee Indians. She wrote; "Buck Gibson and Vardy Collins, the 'Head and Source' of the Melungeons... with the cunning of their Cherokee Ancestor" or describing Calloway Collins:

• "he was very tall and straight, with hawk-like eye, and long, coarse hair that fell about his well-shapen shoulders with that careless abandon which characterizes the free child of the forest. He wore neither shoes nor stockings, and his trousers were rolled back above the strong, well formed knee, showing the dusky skin which marked him of a race other than white or black. Indian: the grandson of a chief, and the son of a full-blooded Cherokee. Such he claimed, and the most dubious would have yielded the point "

• "his grandfather, old Jordan Collins, had been a healer too, — a healer and a chief; a full-blooded Cherokee chief. No doubt about that: it was on the records"........."Old Jordan was an Indian, "Soft Soul" they called him, and he had been respected by the whites. No man had ever dared call old Jordan a negro: he was a Cherokee, feared and respected as a Cherokee.

She described the way they lived

• They are very like the Indians in many respects–their fleetness of foot, stupidity, cruelty as practiced during the days of their illicit distilling, their love for the forest, their custom of living without doors, one might almost say. For truly the little hovels...."

• Their homes are miserable hovels, set here and there in the very heart of the wilderness. Very few of their cabins have windows, and some have only an opening cut through the wall for a door. In winter an old quilt is hung before it to shut out the cold. 

In 1890 Indians did not live in tepees nor did they live in two story brick homes.   

From the website:  Cherokee Indian Heritage and History: An Introduction to Cherokee History and Culture - this is a Cherokee house from the 1800s

Eastern Cherokee Home 

Soco School House

Check out the photos at Condition of the North Carolina Indians in 1890 found HERE

I don't think there is much difference in the Melungeons homes. 

This is the sketch of Calloway Collins that accompanied Dromgoole's article found HERE

  Calloway himself is a king, a royal good fellow, who, seated upon a great stump that marks the fate of a giant beech that grew precisely in the center of the site selected by the Indian for his shed, or hallway,  would entertain me by the hour with his songs and banjo-picking and stories of his grandfather"...."The man's very instincts are Indian.  He sleeps in leaves, inside or out, as he feels inclined.  

The Beech tree is one of the seven sacred trees of the Cherokee. 

Coincidence?  Perhaps?

Anigilohi (Twister Clan or "Long Hair" representing day and night)

Members of the Twister Clan are also known as Long Hair (Anigilohi), Hanging Down Clan or Wind Clan. The word Gilahi is short for an ancient Gitlvgvnahita, meaning "something that grows from the back of the neck". They rest in the south on the Chickamaugan Stomp Ground. Members of this clan wore their hair in elaborate hair styles, walked in a proud and vain manner, twisting their shoulders. (Hence, Twister Clan). Peace Chiefs wore a white feather robe. This clan's responsibility is to teach tradition, spiritual knowledge and intuition. Many old spiritual priests came from this clan. It is sometimes referred to as the Stranger Clan because prisoners of war, orphans from other tribes and others with no Cherokee tribe were often adopted into this clan. Their color is yellow, their wood is beech and their flag is black with white stars. (Seven Clans)

Will Allen Dromgoole's work is extremely valuable to the history of the Melungeons. Some of it may be exaggerated, some may be wrong, but all in all it prompted ethnologist, anthropologists, historians etc.,  of that era to look further into their history.  

On the subject of Dromgoole, Jacks Goins wrote;

From: "Jack Goins" 

Subject: Re: [Melungeon] The Malungeons 1891 pt III 

Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2003 21:14:17 

Joanne I fully agree Dromgoole work is priceless. I would love to have her notes of that trip to Newman. Her discription of that shool house setting and the ole school teacher fits, Walnut Grove and George Washington Goins. Jack