This is a reprint of Chapter 11 in my book Smoky Mountain
Mysteries.
This story has special appeal for readers who have an interest in true
mysteries of historical significance. Check out the Story Excerpts for a preview
of the other stories in this book.
Melungeons — People of Mystery
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The unsolved mystery of the Melungeons has a particular personal facet for me. I heard the word Melungeon for the first time about ten years ago, during a conversation with my mother’s sister, my Aunt Sarah.
She was telling stories about her parents, my maternal grandparents. Both of them had died before I was born, and I know very little about them. Perhaps this is because I’ve never been really interested in my family history.
Aunt Sarah was mischievous by nature, so she told stories that others whispered only to confidants. On this occasion she was telling me about a visit with an aged great-aunt, Laura Simons. They had not seen each other in almost thirty years, so a cousin was helping to establish that Aunt Sarah was one of John Shepherd’s daughters.
Aunt Laura peered at Sarah and asked, "Are you one of his legitimate daughters, or one of the illegitimate ones?"
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Aunt Sarah said she was taken aback, and stammered, "I guess I’m one of the legitimate ones! I don’t know anything about my daddy having illegitimate children."
"Well," Aunt Laura replied, "that’s about what I’d expect you to say. If you don’t know about all your illegitimate half- brothers and sisters, it’s high time you did."
Aunt Sarah said she was insulted and retorted, "Then why don’t you tell me about them?"
She said Aunt Laura seemed to take great pleasure in reciting the sins of her father. "You know your daddy had sawmills all over several counties in western North Carolina and eastern Tennessee. He always was a lady’s man, and you may as well know he even got a Melungeon pregnant, and the talk was that she had twins, a boy and a girl. What a stink that caused! And there were others."
I interrupted. "What is a Melungeon?"
Aunt Sarah replied, "A group of people who live in the Tennessee mountains. They are not Indians, but may be part Indian, because they have darker skin than regular white people. Nobody knows where they came from, or if God just created them like Adam and Eve and put them there. You love mysteries, so you can check this one out at the library. I don’t know much about them."
"Do you know if what Aunt Laura said about your daddy fathering twins with a Melungeon woman is true?"
Aunt Sarah grinned, "I don’t know. I thought about asking some kinfolks who knew Judge Lewis Shepherd, one of Daddy’s cousins down in Chattanooga, but never did. Lewis won a big court case for a Melungeon girl. I don’t remember the details, but it was about her inheriting some money, and he got it for her. I decided to let that sleeping dog lie."
I had no interest in my grandfather’s possible adultery, or illegitimate progeny, but I was
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hooked on the unsolved mystery of the Melungeons. Many people are seeking to solve this mystery, and I follow it regularly in a variety of sources, particularly the World Wide Web.
This chapter is not intended to be either comprehensive or authoritative, but just to share enough information to stimulate interest in other unsolved-mystery addicts.
The origin and racial composition of the Melungeons has been the subject of many legends. The most far-out legend I have found to date is the one used by Appalachian whites who lived around the Melungeons to explain their origin.
This legend declares that the Devil was expelled from Hell for a time by his wife. He came to the Great Smoky Mountains, where he took a Cherokee girlfriend, and fathered the Melungeons.Explorers Discovered the Melungeons in the 17th Century
When explorers pushed into the Appalachians, beginning in the 17th century, they discovered a group of people whose origins remain an unsolved mystery. Most of them lived in eastern Tennessee, but there were a few in Kentucky and Virginia. They had established an orderly agrarian society in the fertile valleys, and sheltered themselves in cabins.Page 117
The people had English surnames, spoke an Elizabethan English dialect with a mountain cadence, practiced the Christian religion, and called themselves "Portyghee." This word sounded like a corruption of "Portuguese," but the explorers at the time did not appear to give any credence to the possibility that these people had their roots in Portugal.
Melungeon Physical Characteristics
Most of the people had black hair and dark eyes, but a few had blonde or red hair and very striking blue or blue-green eyes. The explorers described the people as having skin that was "not white," "not black," "not Indian red," but a mixture of these colors. This description probably resulted in the people being called "Melungeons," from the French melange, a mixture.
There are many other possible explanations for the name "Melungeon," some serious, some amusing.
Dr. N. Brent Kennedy, vice chancellor for development and college relations at the University of Virginia’s College at Wise, a prominent researcher of the Melungeons, says the name Melungeon is derived from the Arabic "Melun-Jinn," meaning one who has been abandoned by God and is a cursed soul.
That seems so sad that I was happy to find another theory which smacks of good humor. Michael Edward Nassau (who changed his name from McGlothlen in 1997), author of Melungeons and Other Mestee Groups, says his favorite word for an origin of the name Melungeon is melongene, a French word for eggplant!
In correspondence with Edward Nassau, Dr. Kennedy used the salutation, "Dear Eggplant!"
Mr. Nassau has published his work on the World Wide Web, and it can be read and/or downloaded free.
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Theories About the Origin of the Melungeons
Every theory I found has its supporters and its detractors. There is a great deal of research being done by highly competent people, but no theory has been proved. Hybridization of people and their languages has occurred since the first human drew a breath, and this wreaks havoc with theories.
Here are some of the most popular traditional theories of the origin of the Melungeons:
Survivors from the Lost Colony of Roanoke Island in North Carolina, who intermarried with Native Americans.n
n
Tri-Racial Isolates: isolated group of intermarried white, black, and Native American populations.n
Descendants of the Welsh explorer "Madoc" who supposedly roamed in southern Appalachia in the 12th century.n
Survivors from Portuguese shipwrecks who mated with Native Americans.n
Descendants of one of the "lost tribes" of Israel.n
Descendants of early Carthaginian or Phoenician seamen who mated with Native Americans.n
Descendants of Mediterranean/Middle Eastern/East Indian people.Discussion of all of these theories is beyond the scope of this book, but anyone interested in exploring one of these theories will find a wealth of information on the World Wide Web and in print. We’ll take a look at two of them.
The Carthaginian Theory
I began my research into the Melungeon mystery by checking the story Aunt Sarah had told about my grandfather’s cousin, Lewis Shepherd, winning a court case in Chattanooga, Tennessee, involving a Melungeon girl who was being denied an inheritance.
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Her story was easily verified in official court records and legal references. Many of them titled the case the "Celebrated Melungeon Case." Lewis Shepherd was a prominent attorney and judge in Chattanooga at the time of his death in 1917 at the age of 61. This is a synopsis of the "Celebrated Melungeon Case."
In 1872 a Melungeon mother and a white father asked Lewis Shepherd, who was a struggling lawyer at the time, to help their daughter claim an inheritance. The daughter’s inheritance was being challenged in court by cousins on the grounds that:
• Under Tennessee law only legitimate children can claim an inheritance.
• This cousin’s, the defendant’s, mother was Melungeon.
• Melungeons are part black.
• Black-white marriage was illegal under Tennessee law.
• Hence the defendant is illegitimate, and cannot inherit.
The theory of the cousins’ case was considered to be based on law as solid as a rock. At that time, Tennessee law prohibited the marriage of a person one-sixth or more "Negro" to a white person.
Recognizing that it was futile to do battle on the merits of the Tennessee law on marriage between whites and blacks, Lewis Shepherd went into court with a case theory that was unexpected, and it produced unexpected results.
He espoused a new theory about the racial origin of the Melungeons. They were, in his judgment after investigations, descended from the Phoenicians of Ancient Carthage. Their ancestors had migrated from Portugal and had settled in South Carolina about the time of the
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Revolutionary war. They moved into Tennessee, but had never intermarried with blacks. Hence, Lewis Shepherd argued:
• The defendant mother’s was a descendant of a Carthaginian, without "Negro" blood.
• Therefore the mother’s marriage to a white man was legal under Tennessee law.
• That law had to recognize the daughter born of that marriage as a legitimate child.
• As a legitimate child, the court must issue an order that she was a legal heir.
The court agreed with his arguments, and the girl’s cousins, the plaintiffs, lost.
Mediterranean/Middle Eastern/East Indian Theory
For decades Melongeons have claimed to possess a partial Mediterranean/Middle Eastern/East Indian heritage.
This is the theory espoused by Dr. N. Brent Kennedy. He believes there is evidence that the Melungeons were settlers of either Ottoman Turks or Spanish/Turkish sailors who were stranded on American soil. Being trained survivalists, they pushed inland and intermarried with Cherokee, Creek, Powhatan, Catawba and Chickahominy women.
Dr. Kennedy has assembled a team of forty-two scientists and researchers who are studying all aspects of the Melungeon mystery. They are examining linguistics, medical genetics, diseases, dress styles, and physical traits to establish evidence of Melungeon ancestry.
They have found similarities in the languages that appear to be beyond chance. More than one thousand words in the Melungeon vocabulary have been traced to Arabic or Turkish origin.
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One example is "Alleghany," which in Turkish means "God’s Spaciousness."
Dr. Kevin Jones, a molecular biologist and professor at the University of Virginia at Wise, is coordinating a comprehensive genetics study on the origins of the Melungeons with several other genetics labs and local area physicians.
The study is anticipated to be concluded before the end of 2002. Although Dr. Jones and the others will likely publish their findings in a refereed journal, a synopsis of the study results will be made available at an appropriate time on the Melungeon Heritage Association Website http://www.geocities.com/BourbonStreet/Inn/1024.
While this study probably will not give a definitive answer on the origin of the Melungeons, it is certain to shed new light on their ancestry and lead to further research.
Dr. N. Brent Kennedy is the author of the book The Melungeons: The Resurrection of a Proud People.
Discrimination Against the Melungeons
The case of the Melungeon girl’s having to go to court to claim an inheritance came about because whites reportedly discriminated against the Melungeons.
The majority of historians report that the white explorers seized the land from the Melungeons and drove most of them from the valleys to the ridge tops and poor or isolated land. But a few historians disagree, citing records that show that some of the Melungeon leaders owned a lot of good land. They cite records that seem to show that Melungeons, and other races of people who arrived in Tennessee in the 19th century, had to settle for less desirable land because the best land had already been claimed.
But there is no valid disagreement that the white majority passed laws to discriminate against the Melungeons.
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While the laws varied from state to state, they established a legal classification for Melungeons as free persons of color, but were denied rights to education, voting and judicial process.
The discrimination became so intense in central Appalachia that many Melungeons hid their backgrounds in a variety of ways. They adopted new surnames, became "Black Dutch," "Black Irish," or "Indian," or moved to a new community where they told everyone all their family were dead.
Legal discrimination lasted until antidiscrimination laws were passed by Congress in the 1960s. Social discrimination has not been legislated out of existence, so the process of eradication of that form of discrimination is still going on.
Walk Toward the Sunset
An outdoor drama about the Melungeons, Walk Toward the Sunset, ran from 1969 to 1974 in Hancock County, Tennessee. It was written by Kermit Hunter (1910-2001), who wrote more than forty outdoor dramas and is perhaps the most widely performed playwright in the United States. Among his dramas are The Lost Colony and Unto These Hills.
This drama is credited by many as greatly improving people’s understanding of the Melungeons. It also had a positive impact on some Melungeons. For the first time, many began to acknowledge their maligned heritage with pride.
The impact of the play was not accidental, but the direct result of Kermit Hunter’s understanding of the Melungeon story and his great skill to tap into the minds and hearts of his audiences.
He is quoted as having said, "The story of the Melungeons is typical of some of the darker impulses in the American dream: those moments when the American dream gets crowded by white supremacy, the arrogance of wealth and position and power."
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He illuminated each of these points as he told a story about certain whites driving some of the Melungeons from their valley farms to subsistence farming and moonshining.
The drama was created to alleviate poverty in Hancock County, one of the poorest counties in the United States. The movers and shakers realized they had two things going for them: some of the most beautiful mountains in the world, and the mysterious Melungeons. They used both, and the result was an economic and social success.
Although some consider the outdoor play strictly an economic venture, others believe it caused people to question racial stereotyping and bigotry.
Mahala Mullins
Mahala Collins Mullins, nicknamed "Big Haley," is a famous Melungeon. She was born on March 30, 1824, in Hancock County, and died there in 1898.
Big Haley became famous for producing top-quality apple brandy and corn liquor, and selling it openly from her front door. And she was famous for her immense proportions. When she died, an obituary in a Columbia, Tennessee, newspaper read, "Mahala Mullins, famous fat woman of Hancock County, Tennessee, has died."
Reports of her weight range from 300 to 600 pounds. There is speculation that she suffered from elephantiasis. Whatever the reason, her weight gave her immunity from arrest! All the sheriffs knew where she was and that she was moonshining. Any one of them who came along could get a warrant for her arrest and serve it on her, but the action stopped there. Not one could solve the problem of getting her to the jail!
When Big Haley died, the story goes that either the chimney or a wall had to be removed to make room to carry her out in her bed, which had been boxed up like a coffin.
She was laid to rest in a small cemetery near the house with some of her children who had died as infants.
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Mattie Ruth Johnson
I bought several books on the Melungeons — and read dozens more — while researching this story. One book that put a warm human face on the Melungeons mystery for me is Mattie Ruth Johnson’s book My Melungeon Heritage A Story of Life on Newman’s Ridge.
In 2002 Mattie Ruth Johnson works full time as a nurse, and is also an artist as well as a writer. The designer of the cover on her book used her painting the “Calf Lot Tree.”
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Her honest, wistful account of her life, blended so skillfully with her research findings on the Melungeons, prompted me to contact her for permission to include information about her book in this book, which she gave most graciously.
This is a quote from the Preface to her book, "The mysteries I leave to others. For example, an upcoming documentary on the Melungeons by Bill VanDerKloot and N. Brent Kennedy should give greater insight into some of the more recent findings regarding the origins of the Melungeons as a people. We shall see. Melungeons may have connections to many nationalities, including the Lost Tribe of Israel."
Mattie Ruth Johnson was born and raised in Hancock County, and is a descendant of several of the first known settlers in that county. Mahala Mullins is Mattie’s great-great-great aunt on her mother’s side of her family, and also her great-great-great aunt on her father’s side of the family.
Will the Melungeons Remain - A Mystery People?
With so many people working to solve the mystery of the Melungeons, more information is bound to surface, but the true origins may remain an intriguing unsolved mystery.
I must agree with Mattie Ruth Johnson, whom I consider an expert on this mystery, in her conclusion: "Some mysteries may never be solved, but does it really matter?"
