BS: Who are the Melungians? / Melungeons

Subject: RE: BS: Who are the Melungians? / Melungeons
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 17 Nov 09 - 01:33 PM

There was an hour-long program on NPR probably 10 or 15 years ago at least that went into the possible origins of this term and the rather shaky scholarship that has been used to establish this as a viable minority of some sort.

There was a thread several years earlier than the one Jack linked to and I think I dug up that program name and posted it. I'm not going to try to recreate that source, but you might dig a little further and you'll find more here at Mudcat.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Who are the Melungians? / Melungeons
From: mg
Date: 17 Nov 09 - 12:36 PM

It is even better..I said to self..if you google Atlantis and Melungeon you will get some hits. Sure enough...

Next I am going to see if there was perhaps intermarriage between the Pavee and the Melungeon. Some very Irish as well as Welsh names are the most common..Collins and Mullen or Mullins ...which is the name of the Lord Ventry. mg

Subject: RE: BS: Who are the Melungians? / Melungeons
From: mg
Date: 16 Nov 09 - 04:11 PM

Even more. Sephardic Jews.

http://melungeons.com/articles/mar_2003/march2003a.htm

Subject: RE: BS: Who are the Melungians? / Melungeons
From: mg
Date: 16 Nov 09 - 03:50 PM

Now some Croatian connections

http://melungeons.com/articles/jan2007.htm

Subject: RE: BS: Who are the Melungians? / Melungeons
From: mg
Date: 16 Nov 09 - 02:58 PM

Even still more better. I was reading an old newspaper article from the 1940s or so and in some interview..can't provide source...they talked about 150 A.D. and carthage and some hero of Shakespear ...the gist was that a group of people from MidEast were chased to Morocco and from there immigrated to Portugal and South Carolina..where in SC they owned quite a bit of the best land..but with slavery and discrimination they were forced to migrate again to the hills...what is interesting is that many suggestions about shipwrecks of Spanish and Portguese sailors..but DNA testing shows maternal lines carry the same markers for Syrian and Turkish and other blood..which means that women were involved from way back when..not just male sailors marrying (hopefully) native or immigrant women. This is speculatve of course...but there is a huge mystery here...possibly first non-Native settlers of US? mg

Subject: RE: BS: Who are the Melungians? / Melungeons
From: GUEST,ronster
Date: 14 Nov 09 - 10:57 PM

they are related to the nickelodeons

Subject: RE: BS: Who are the Melungians? / Melungeons
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 14 Nov 09 - 04:31 PM

Gets even more interesting

http://www.melungeon.org/node/77

This guy mentions being Melungeon and finding he had DNA in common with Turks, which I guess many do..and there is interest in Turkey about this new-found family.

But he also mentions the FInns and said that there are similarities between Turkish and Finnish (and I have heard Welsh and Finnish..don't know) and that Turks made their way to Finland.

THis is somehow very important..it solves mysteries for me...mg

Subject: RE: BS: Who are the Melungians? / Melungeons
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 14 Nov 09 - 03:53 PM

http://www.melungeons.com/articles/jan2003.htm

Another interesting article.

SOmething I read on a genealogy forum discussed links to Sa'ami of Northern Europe. mg

Subject: RE: BS: Who are the Melungians? / Melungeons
From: mg
Date: 13 Nov 09 - 04:20 PM

Well, this is interesting..some people on a genealogy web site think Obama has Melungeon roots via his mother's Kansas relatives. I have read Abraham LIncoln as well..and one is said to have signed the constitution. This is getting more and more interesting.

And I am starting to wonder if I could have a bit..my mother is from the south via some family from Michigan etc., but some via Georgia. They are supposedly Welsh and Cornish on one side and Dutch and Native American and other on the other side. and my mother is known to have an Native American grandmother (or ggm?). Anyway, I only saw my grandparents three times in my life, but my mother, one brother and my grandfather have darker skin than the rest of us pale ones. I said..well, I could see that my grandfather could be part Native American..and one of my siblings said no..it was my grandmother who had the Native American ancestor, not my grandfather...so I am just wondering. mg

Subject: RE: BS: Who are the Melungians? / Melungeons
From: mg
Date: 13 Nov 09 - 02:28 PM

http://books.google.com/books?id=WfHoqUBay-UC&pg=PA41&lpg=PA41&dq=melungeon&source=bl&ots=2MUcl1C770&sig=Wepx3165ySYcaL4_HMKKjeskS-w&hl=en&ei=FrH9Sv-0N4y8sgPR2N2eCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CBAQ6AEwAzhG#v=onepage&q=melungeon&f=false

Interesting book partially on line. I just glanced at it but she talks about DNA and various ethnic disease patterns and Moors and people (Jewish and Moslem) escapting the Inquisition..funny..I just read Codex 632 about Columbus and encountered a few of the same hsitorical ideas. mg

Subject: RE: BS: Who are the Melungians?
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 13 Nov 09 - 01:13 PM

Sorry Dave, I take it all back.

Dave H

Subject: RE: BS: Who are the Melungians?
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 13 Nov 09 - 12:05 PM

Dave H, don't say that! We're trying to keep this non-pejoritative!

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: Who are the Melungians?
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 13 Nov 09 - 03:33 AM

Second cousins to the Melodeons.

Dave H

Subject: RE: BS: Who are the Melungians?
From: Janie
Date: 12 Nov 09 - 09:50 PM

Thanks for linking to that original thread, Jack. (Hopefully a clone with combine the two?)

Really good articles and information.

Subject: RE: BS: Who are the Melungians?
From: Janie
Date: 12 Nov 09 - 09:35 PM

I think the Wikipedia article makes pretty clear the non-specificity and controversy of the term.

I have distant relatives (confirmed through Y-DNA testing) who have documentation of ancestors who were called Melungeon in some documents, but do not know what that really means genealogically. They assume that means both African-American and Native American ancestry, in addition to Welch ancestry but do not know. There is strong circumstantial evidence of Cherokee ancestry among all of the family branches included in our group of DNA matches, (among those who have done genealogical research, tracking scarce birth, death, land transfer, Will, revolutionary war pension applications and land grants) but the Melungeon designation for the particular branch of the family was documented before any of the branches moved into the southern Appalachians. The genealogical paper trail going back to the early 1700's is incomplete and hard to follow for the White males, and nearly non-existent for non-White males and for females of any race or ethnicity. In addition, it is much easier to trace male DNA lines than it is female DNA lines.


So, Melungeon appears to be a very non-specific term with respect to ethnicity, and objectively simply implies mixed ancestry that includes Caucasian and non-Caucasian ancestors. It apparently did not carry the negative, racially based loss of social status and rights of the those later, or in different regions, designated "mulatto," or "half-breed." I'd be very curious to understand the sociology and historical anthropology around that.

Subject: RE: BS: Who are the Melungians?
From: Rapparee
Date: 12 Nov 09 - 08:49 PM

I think St. Paul wrote an epistle to them....

Subject: RE: BS: Who are the Melungians?
From: Jack Campin
Date: 12 Nov 09 - 07:07 PM

We have been here before:

Melungeons on Mudcat

Subject: RE: BS: Who are the Melungians?
From: bobad
Date: 12 Nov 09 - 04:22 PM

Some info at Wikipedia:

Melungeon

Subject: RE: BS: Who are the Melungians?
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 12 Nov 09 - 04:19 PM

I can't remember where I've read about them, but I remember that Abraham Lincoln was said to be of Melungian stock way back.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: Who are the Melungians?
From: Charley Noble
Date: 12 Nov 09 - 04:14 PM

MG-

From the website LIVE JOURNAL:

"From what I've looked up about Melungians, the genetic testing all indicates some European and African ancestry, along with Native American. They usually had English surnames, esp. Collins. Even in the 1700s the Melungians were referred to as "Tri-Racial" and if you ask the people themselves, they claimed to be "Portygeese." There are genetic connections a group in Turkey, which happens to also have the skull ridge. Portugal was part of the Turkish Empire until the late 1400s, and so was all of Northern Africa. There would have been a lot of genetic mixing throughout the entire empire--lots of folks, mostly soldiers and merchants, travelled the length and breadth of the empire on a regular basis. So the claim to being Portuguese is possible, even likely. There were scattered Portuguese immigrations all during the 1700s, but the Melungians seem to have been well established in westernmost Virginia and East Tennessee before 1700.

Most likely, the Melungians are descended from immigrants who landed in Spanish territory (St. Augustine, Florida was founded by Spain in 1565--that's 42 years before Jamestown) who intermarried with the Cherokee before English Colonists ever came into the area. If the Spanish kept records of immigration, I bet nobody's bothered to check, however, complete recordkeeping would have been impossible what with all the indians and pirates running around, mostly ignoring bureaucracy. It's pretty easy to imagine a couple of families from Saint Augustine marrying local and ending up in East Tennessee (it's only 589 highway miles away from Knoxville), and nobody think there was anything weird about it for 3 or 4 generations."

This is not necessarily a statement from someone with professional credentials but it may be a lead.

Charley Noble

Subject: RE: BS: Who are the Melungians?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 12 Nov 09 - 04:09 PM

"Melange", meaning "mixed. Same way that "Meti" does.

Subject: RE: BS: Who are the Melungians?
From: mg
Date: 12 Nov 09 - 04:07 PM

No..these are clans of people in the Appalachians of US. mg

Subject: RE: BS: Who are the Melungians?
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 12 Nov 09 - 04:01 PM

Do you mean the Meltonians? 'Cos they're polish

Subject: BS: Who are the Melungians?
From: mg
Date: 12 Nov 09 - 03:53 PM

I read something of them for the first time..if I have the name right..Appalachian? Perhaps some Portueguese and Native American and other ethnic mixes. mg

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