As more articles, newspapers, and
records are brought online the more the picture of the
first fifty years of Melungeons changes also.
1813
Most Melungeon researchers believe
the first use of this word was at the Stoney Creek Church near Fort
Blackmore in present day Scott County in 1813. Without the
original transcript we can not be sure it was a 'Malungeon' they were
harboring but if they were indeed harboring 'Malungeons' were
they Gibsons, Collins, Sextons, etc., that had been members for
almost fifteen years? These families were mentioned numerous
times for drinking, fighting and sinning yet they had never been
referred to as anything in thirteen years, not 'negroes', not
'Indians', and not 'Malungeons'. Oddly enough the Stoney Creek Church
clerk was Nevil Wayland who was either the son or husband of Kezziah
who was most daughter of Thomas and Mary Gibson from Henry County,
Virginia.
Oct 4
1805
Nevil Wayland Jun-r enters fifty acres of land by virture of part of a
Land Office Treasury warrant No 1855 dated March 18th 1796 lying in
Russell county on both
sides of Copper Creek beginning at a conditional line between
John Mc. Clelan and
James Gibson then running up the Creek on both sides for
quantity.
This Indenture made the fifth day
of May int the year of our Lord 1812, betwen Saml Ewing attorney for
Hugh Mc Clung of the one part, and Keziah Weland of the other part both
of the county of Russell and State of Virginia Witnesseth That the said
Saml. Ewing atty for Hugh McClung for and in consideration fo the sum
of fifteen dollars lawful money of the United States to him in hand
paid the reciept whereof is hereby acknowledged hath granted bargained
and sold, and by these presents doth grant bargain and sell unto the
aforesaid Keziah
Weland and her heirs forever, a certain tract or parcel of land
lying and being in the county of Russell on the waters of Cooper Creek
including a Spring called the Pound Spring and bounded as fowlloweth to
wit: Beginning on a white oak about ten poles east of the pound spring
thence s45degree W.46 poles to a White oak Nathan Mullets corner,
thence s 20 degree W 14 poles to a black gum thence s 5 degree E 16
poles to a large white oak. N. 6 0 degree W 20 poles to a chesnut N. 70
degree W.10 poles to a small poplar N 40 W 20poles to two poplars near
the age of a sink hole thence N. 40 degree E 36 poles to a white oak
thence whith a straight line to the Beginning containing fifteen acres
be the same less or more. But it is to be name
that there is fifteen acres excluded out of this deed for which I have
already made a deed for to John Gibson dated the 7th day of November
1809. With all the appretenances to have and to hold the
aforesaid trac or parcel of land with all its apprentenances unto the
said _________Weland and her heirs, to the sole use and behoof of her
the said Keziah Weland and her heirs forever. And the said Saml. Ewing
atty. for Hugh Mcclung and their heirs doth convenant with the
said Keziah Weland and her heirs that the said tract or parcel of land
with all and singlualr it appuntenaces unto the said Keziah Weland and
her heirs against the claim or claims of all
person whatsoever shall and will forever de fend.
Would this clerk at the church
have written down the word 'melungin,' if it was in fact used as a
slur, against his mother's people?
1840
The "fighting parson" William Brownlow appears to be the first to use
the term 'Malungen' in a newspaper in 1840 although it is
doubtful the person he was referring to was in fact a Malungen.
On October 7, 1840 he wrote about this "scoundrel who is half Negro and
half Indian, the article was titled "Negro Speaking." Several
researchers have been in contact with me over the years and we have
worked on who this 'Democratic Malungen' might be but have found very
little clues.
1848
A journalist from the
Louisville
Examiner
visited the Melungeons on Newman's Ridge where he
had spent the night at the hotel owned by Vardy Collins and his wife
Margaret (Gibson) who was known as Spanish Peggy. This article
published in the Louisville paper was copied to the Times
Picayune
in Louisianna
on September 05, 1848, the Knoxville Register September
6, 1848
and also picked up by the Sheybogan Mercury
in Wisconsin on September 16, 1848. Up in New England it was
covered by the Vermont
Journal on September
22, 1848, and the Albany
Evening Journal in New York
on August 23, 1848 and
on
March 21, 1849 it was again printed in the Boston Evening
Transcript. In Volume XX of
Eliakim Littell's popular, The
Living
Age,a weekly literary
periodical published
out of Boston,
it was reprinted yet again in January of 1849.
These
are only the ones I have been able to dig up so
far, there are no doubt many other papers that carried this
story. Most of these papers that reprinted the article added this
paragraph;
"We are free to
confess that we have never heard of or read of the ‘Melungeons’ before
this day, and all we know about them now is what we derive from the
following imperfect description obtained in a letter from a travelling
correspondent of the Louisville, Ky., Examiner. The letter bears
no date, but the site of the Melungen race appears to be somewhere in
Kentucky."
What this
journalist published was the 'Legend of the Melungeons,' as told
to
him (likely by his hosts) . In 1848 he wrote they were
Portuguese adventurers who had mixed with the local Indians and their
descendants with the blacks and the whites after their move to
Tennessee.
-- The Melungeons may have been unknown to most of the country
before the Louisville journalist made his way to the ridge but
after 1848 it
is obvious much of the country knew who they were.
1853-1869
Most
articles, dissertations, books, and newspapers written in
the last
fifty years have not mentioned the use of Brownlow's Malungen in the
Whig or the numerous uses of Molungeons
in the Virginia papers from 1853 to 1869 where it was used in regards to
political
epithets or the making of moonshine.
They have been found twice in Civil War
books, once in the diary of Edward
O. Guerrant and in Battles and
Sketches of the Army of Tennessee where a scout, Bose
Rouss, was identified as a Malungeon.
1870s
The
Melungeons would again make the papers with the reports of 'illicit
distilleries' and 'crooked whiskey'in the mountains. While the entire
south seems to have been engaging in the practice the
Malungeons apparently kept the government men busy for years selling
their liquor all over East Tennessee, Western North Carolina and
Southwest Virginia. Only two articles have been found so far that
mention the Malungeons but there are very likely more out there as
there are dozens that mention these distilleries in East Tennessee.
1875
The
only documented record of Melungeons to date is the Hamilton County
trial of Jerome Simmerman's heir, the granddaughter of Solomon Bolton,
Jemima Bolton Simmerman. The attorney of
record, Lewis Shepherd, wrote in his memoirs that these Melungeons came
over the mountains
from South Carolina (Marion County) stopping off on Newman's Ridge
before going on to
Hamilton County. Solomon Bolton served in the War of 1812 from
South
Carolina and is found in Spartanburg before coming to Tennessee
-- (See Celebrated
Melungeon Case)
1886
Goodspeed's History of
Tennessee : "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. " While
they were not called 'Melungeons' they were described as
'peculiar' at least four years before Will Allen Dromgoole.
1889
Swan Burnett wrote in 1889; "They resented the appellation
Melungeon, given to them by common consent by the whites, and proudly
called themselves Portuguese. ...The current belief was that they were
a mixture of white, Indian, and Negro." Burnett had help researching
the Melungeons from
Dr. J. M. Pierce of Hawkins County, Tennessee and also Dr. Gurley of
the Smithsonian.
Between February of 1889 when Burnett first read his report on the
Melungeons and when it was published in October he ''had
received from several sources valuable information" in regard to the
Melungeons. ''One of whom was Hamilton McMillan who had attached
his
pamphlet on Raleigh's Lost Colony printed in 1888. Miss
Dromgoole had not yet went to Hancock County yet we see Hamilton
McMillan, Swan Burnett and the Smithsonian exchanging research.
This letter from Hamilton McMillan, also written before Dromgoole
entered the picture was addressed to the
Commissioner of Indian Affairs and was included in the 1890
Indian
Population Report published by the Census Bureau.
July 17, 1890
--Red
Springs, North Carolina
Hamilton
McMillan
'The Croatan tribe
lives principaly in Robeson county, North Carolina, though there is
quite a number of them settle in counties adjoining in North and South
Carolina. In Sumter county, South Carolina, there is a branch of
the tribe, and also in east Tennessee. In Macon county, North
Carolina, there is another branch, settled there long ago. those living in east tennessee are
called "Melungeons", a name also retained by them here, which is
corruption of 'Melange', a name given them by early settlers (French),
which means mixed.''
When notice of Swan
Burnett's article appeared in the Atlanta Constitution Mr. Lawrence
Johnson who was born in Chester County, South Carolina recogized
these people who 'proudly called themselves Portuguese' as a group whom
he had encountered in South Carolina along the Peedee River. Although
Burnett's article stated the Melungeons had came from Virginia and
North Carolina Mr. Johnson was quick to connect these two groups.
Miss Dromgoole's first article was published the end of August and the
second was dated the 1st of September of 1890 and within two weeks it
brought responses in the form of 'Letters to the Editor' of Malungeon
Town in Wilson County where a settlement of the Portuguese settlers had
resided in the 1850s. Another letter dated September 25th from
W.D.P of Rogersville wrote;
"The
newspapers of the country are again wrangling with the 'Melungeons' or
'lungens' a peculiar race of people living along Newman's Ridge in
Hancock county. They are also scattered along Clinch mountain in
Hawkins and Grainger in isolated settlements. Even that bright
and
fascinating young writer, Miss Will Allen Dromgoole has taken it upon
herself to journey all the way from Nashville to the wilds of Hancock
for the evident purpose of settling once and for all the much disputed
question of their origin. Unfortunately she gleamed little
information
other than that already published." (W.D.P)
Note W.D.P. says they are 'again' wrangling and apparently most
of what she wrote had already been published. Perhaps we might
find what 'had already been published' someday. (Read Letter)
At the end of 1890 there were at least two historical societies
interested in the Melungeon research and neither appear to have
acknowledged the articles by Dromgoole. The Tennessee Historical
Society met in December at Nashville and was addressed by Judge John
Lea on the subject of Melungeons. He gave an outline of the early
history of the settlement in North Carolina and went on to say;
"A party under the protection of a
friendly Indian chief had gone into the interior when the first
settlers came to that coast and had been lost. No other settlers came till a century afterward, and
they were told of a tribe who claimed a white ancestry, and among whom
gray eyes were frequent. This
people were traced to Buncomb and Robeson counties, where the same
family and personal names were found as in the lost colonies.
They are now
called Croatans, on account of a sign they made on the trees to keep
their way. The Basques of the Spanish coast have been said to have
settled in that country, but this theory was not thought to be
trustworthy. It would be impossible for negroes to form a distinct
race, because the number necessary for a colony would not have been
allowed to run at large. The race has several old English words which
are used as they were in England two hundred years ago, and a case of
civil rights has been won in court by a Melungeon displaying his person
and proving to the court that he was of Caucasian blood. North Carolina
gives the Croatians $1,000 a year for a normal school, and they have
excellent roads. This
colony, whose early history is thus so clearly traced, lies within
forty miles of the Tennessee Melungeons. (Article
Here)
Stephen B. Weeks in the Lost Colony of Roanoke
printed from the Papers Am.
Hist. Asso., Vol. iv., No. 4., 1891 relates a letter received
from Mr. John M. Bishop who had apparently attended the meeting of the
American Historical Association in December of 1890.
''Mr. McMillan favors the view
that they are a part of the colony of Roanoke, and on this question Mr.
John M. Bishop, a native of east Tennessee, now living in Washington,
writes to the author: "My theory is that they are a part of the lost
colony of Roanoke. Your utterances at the recent meeting in this city
on the subject of the Lost Colony of Roanoke (meeting of Amer. Hist. Ass'n.,
Dec. 31, 1890) were so nearly in line with my ideas in this
matter that I now write to call your attention to the subject. . . .
You will mark the fact that the Malungeons are located on Newmans Ridge
and Black Water creek in Hancock county, Tenn., directly in the path of
ancient westward emigration. Dan Boone tramped all over this immediate
section. . . . The Malungeons, drifting with the tide of early
emigration, stranded on the borderland of the wilderness and remained
there."
These last two mentions in December of 1890, although printed after the
Dromgoole articles, clearly show they had been in contact with Hamilton
McMillan and likely Swan Burnett rather than Miss Dromgoole.
James Mooney, McDonald Furman, Swan Burnett, Dr., Gurley, C. A.
Peterson, Hamilton McMillan, Judge John Lea, Stephen B. Weeks,
all were connected with the Smithsonian and were not basing their
research on what most authors today describe Will Allen Dromgoole -- "a
local color writer."