Review Essay:
The Melungeons
By Virginia Easley DeMarce,
Ph.D.
The Melungeons: The
Resurrection of a Proud People. An Untold Story of Ethnic Cleansing in
America
By N. Brent Kennedy, with
Robyn Vaughan Kennedy.
Published by
Mercer University Press; Macon, GA 31210; 1994. xviii,
156 pp.
Appendix, illustrations index. Softback, $16.95.
Mercer University Press has placed
its imprimatur on a book that attempts to cross the disciplines of
anthropology, genealogy, and history with genetics as a periodic
refrain. However, the author does not apply the standard methodology of
any of these disciplines. Racial prejudice and persecution, as the
title implies, are the themes that meld all this together. A
chronological leap over several centuries enables the author to propose
an exotic ancestry for "200,000 individuals, perhaps.' far more" (p
xv)-an ancestry that sweeps in virtually every olive, ruddy, and
brown-tinged ethnicity known or alleged to have appeared anywhere in
the pre-Civil War Southeastern United States.
Beginning
with an account of his diagnosis with erythema nodosum sarcoidosis, a
rare, serious medical problem to which certain ethnic groups are
prone-Kennedy presents a deeply felt account of his immediate family.
However, nothing indicates that he investigated whether this medical
problem has appeared elsewhere in the extended families who descend
from his ancestors or, if it does occur in a pattern, in which line(s).1
Any study
centered upon genetics and ethnicity should solidly document all
genealogical data and links. Yet Kennedy offers no evidence, not even
census records. He outlines an ancestry that centers in the Virginia
counties of Wise, Russell, and Scott, and the Kentucky counties of
Floyd and Pike. Beyond that, he implies that his forebears are
traceable only to the mid-to-late eighteenth century. at which time
they were primarily in northwestern North Carolina, (particularly
modern Ashe and Yancey Counties) and the region that became Greenbrier
and Franklin Counties, Virginia. He arranges his pedigree in a series
of "family lines," including (pp. 137-38) one claimed ascent to
Pocahontas (which, if accurate, certainly would not have been a basis
for social persecution) . 2
The failure
to provide documentation makes it difficult to retrace the path by
which the author determined his generational links and sorted forebears
from others of the same name. This difficulty will deter many readers
from the fact checking that good genealogists always perform. Those who
do seek actual evidence and those who already have conducted solid
research on these lines will be dismayed at the extent of the
genealogical errors set forth in so few pages. Similarly, a great deal
of unearned trust is expected of students and scholars in other
disciplines. This review essay covers four major areas of concern:
ethnic identification, prejudice, genealogy, and historical origins. 3
ETHNIC
IDENTIFICATION
Kennedy does
not use the term Melungeon in its anthropological sense-that is, the
interlocking families who moved into, existed in, and dispersed from
Hawkins and Hancock Counties, Tennessee. Rather, he coins a very loose
definition, expanding it to cover essentially all colonial-era
Virginians and Carolinians who (in whatever records he consulted) are
not clearly stated to be European American or African American.
Melungeon thus becomes a catchall description for dark- skinned
individuals whose ancestry does not seem to be sub-Saharan African-as
well as their lighter-skinned relatives and descendants, whom he
presents as subjects of racial prejudice. The manner in which numerous
individuals are "deduced" to be Melungeon is troubling. By surmising a
connection when he cannot show it, he makes "Melungeons" of numerous
frontier families whose ancestry appears to be wholly northern
European, including those whose known origin is Scotch-Irish or German.
Typical cases are the Ritchies (pp.23-24), Hutchinsons (p.27), Kennedys
and Hornes (pp. 66-68), Powerses and Alleys (pp.69-70), and Counts,
Jessees, and Kisers (pp.77-79). In discussing an unproved line of
descent from Edward "Ned" Sizemore, a central figure in the famous
attempt to cash in on early-twentieth-century Eastern Cherokee claims
awards (p.56), Kennedy ignores extensive testimony indicating that
Sizemore descendants were, for social and legal purposes, a white
family claiming Indian ancestry not Melungeons or free nonwhites. 4
Illustrative
of the problem is Kennedy's analysis of William Roberson's ethnicity,
which strongly suggests inexperience in genealogical and historical
research. Because this Revolutionary War veteran supposedly said he was
Scotch-Irish and from London, and because his name is variously spelled
as Robertson, Robinson, and Robeson, Kennedy concludes the man was a
Melungeon who purposefully obscured his true origins. "Surely, if
William . . . really did come from England, Scotland, or Ireland, he
would have known how to spell his last name.... [His] early meandering
in [the Carolinas] undoubtedly plac[ed] him within the geographical
region ... known as 'Robeson' county. Could William I have 'borrowed'
his surname from the name of the county?" (pp.25-26). Coincidentally,
Kennedy proceeds to state that Roberson's son married the first cousin
of President Andrew Jackson. Obviously, in his historical studies,
Kennedy has not encountered Jackson's declaration that he "could never
respect a man who knew only one way to spell a word."5
Kennedy often
refers to the labels fpc (free person of color) and fc (free colored)
informing readers that these were maliciously applied by the
Scotch-Irish to their Melungeon neighbors in order to "strip the
Melungeons of their lands" (p.12), and that "American antebellum census
records consistently described those with Indian blood" as fpc (p. 89,
italics added). Placing his family into this context, he says "they and
we were 'free persons of color"' (p.5). In checking Kennedy's family
lines, this reviewer consistently found the opposite-not a single
instance in which his named ancestors, from 1790 through 1900, appear
in public documents as anything but white. The legal acceptance of
these lines as white by local officials contrasts curiously with the
author's repeated statements that they were routinely labeled fpc. 6
As
frontiersmen and mountaineers, his named ancestors repeatedly appear as
white on federal censuses. Their marriages, where separate books were
maintained for "white" and "colored," are entered in "white" books.7 In
one case, when identifying the father of an out-of-wedlock child as
"Melungeon" and "free person of color" (pp. 70-71), Kennedy does refer
to a source-but misquotes the work he cites. The book is subtitled Free
Black Population of Amherst County, Virginia, and it does mention (in
other contexts) Kennedy's claimed ancestor, David S. Garland; but it
does not identify' Garland as either Melungeon or fpc. In fact, it
specifically indicates that he was white.8
PREJUDICE
Kennedy
alleges, but does not document, systematic, population-wide, race-based
persecution of his ancestral families. His introductory assertion that
Melungeons were "a people ravaged, and nearly destroyed, by the
senseless excesses of racism and genocide" (p. xiii) begs for
supporting evidence-as does his contention that Melungeon families were
originally large landowners, deprived and marginalized by Scotch-Irish
and other northern-European settlers (p.4). Similarly, the author
offers no evidence for his statement that "being legally declared a
'Melungeon' meant losing one's land" (p. 125). He does not present one
land grant, deed, or court case to show that his claimed Melungeon
ancestral lines ever held large tracts of land or that they were
deprived of them by whiter settlers. William Roberson is said to have
"left Greenbriar County Virginia] at the same time the Melungeons were
being 'evicted' "(p.25).
No evidence
of any Melungeon eviction is offered In Wise County, Virginia,
supposedly, "undesirable land [was] ceded to the Melungeons in exchange
for the prime property they had originally held. .... land where the
town of Wise now sits (and) the beautiful farm country of the Powell
Valley were territories well worth stealing" (p.39). Yet no court
suits, deed’s, tax rolls, or land grants are cited. In repeating the
family legend that "William Nash III had once owned some 6,000 acres of
land, but gambled it away," 9.Kennedy's opinion that it was, instead,
"probably taken [from ..... But to cover the truth [of their
persecution] the family had to turn William III into an irresponsible
reprobate" (pp. 39-40). Again, the author offers none of the court or
land records or newspaper notices of public sales that genealogists
routinely cite in cases such as this.
Echoing a
theme popular with some writers on Southern minorities, Kennedy
contends (p.14 and elsewhere) that records are scarce because
persecution caused Melungeon families to "avoid" census takers and
other public officials. 10. That assertion is difficult to support in
this instance, because many records concerning his ancestral families
are readily available. Genealogists of all families suffer lacunae in
the records, but most failures to find evidence can be overcome by
applying improved research skills. Kennedy is not precise in his
discussion of public laws. For example, he states that "by 1834
Melungeons had been stripped of most rights of citizenship in both
Tennessee and North Carolina" (p.15) and that "Sarah [Adkins] and
husband John Bennett left North Carolina with their children in the
late 1830's, about the time that North Carolina declared Melungeons to
be 'free persons of color"' (p.46, italics added).
North
Carolina never "declared Melungeons" to be free persons of color; nor
did a Tennessee statute single out Melungeons for persecution. Statutes
did restrict the rights of persons who were legally classed as free
persons of color; but the 1830s definition of that class, in both
states, was the same definition established in the 1700s. In Tennessee,
state law limited the term to those whose parent or grand-parent was a
full-blooded Indian or Negro (i.e., descent to the third degree). North
Carolina's law extended it to "all Negroes, Indians, and mulattos....
to the fourth generation, inclusive" (i.e., individuals with
one-eighth-degree Negro or Indian ancestry). The laws of the 1830s did
not affect farnilies who were legally white, they did not change
anyone's classification, and they did not mandate anyone to be legally
nonwhite once they passed the point that had been defined in the
1700’s. 11 Similarly, Kennedy reinterprets voting laws. "By a sweep of
the judicial pen,,, readers are told, census takers arbitrarily ruled
Melungeons to be fpc "and, presto! [they] became legally
disenfranchised" (p, 12).12
Returning
later to that theme, Kennedy states that his ancestor Alexander Hall,
son of Isham, rose to the rank of captain in the Confederate army but
was not permitted to vote because of his status as a "free person of
color" (p.33). Yet the 1830 census of Russell County, Virginia, labels
Isham Hall white. 13 By the 1850 enumeration, Alexander had become a
head of household-white, as were his wife, children, father, and
father's family.14 Alexander's future son-in-law, Wickliffe Hendricks
Nash, who also saw Confederate service (p.33), was similarly counted as
white, both in his father's household in 1860 and in his own household
in 1880.15 Kennedy provides no documentation for his statement that
"well into the 1900s, the Nashes and Halls were not permitted to vote"
(p. 40). If this was the case, the cause needs to be documented,
because it does not appear to have been based on their racial
classification in the census.16
GENEALOGY
Two sections,
headed "No Place to Hide," briefly sketch Kennedy's maternal and
paternal lines. Some genealogical problems are obvious, even without
documentation. Other links, relationships, and conclusions do not
withstand fact checking. The following illustrates the types of
concerns that genealogists must address before deciding whether to add
the author's conclusions to their family records.
Mullin
While writing
of his multiple "shot[s] of Old Booker Mullins' genes" (p.73), Kennedy
says next to nothing about the man, only that he was born 1762, died
.1864, and was "apparently from Franklin County, Virginia" (p 47), 17 a
county created in 1785. A variety of records actually exists to track
this man and to sort him from numerous other contemporaries of the same
name. Tax records that have been conveniently published since 1972 show
this Booker to be a 1789 settler of Burks Fork and Greasy Creek of
Indian Ridge, in Montgomery County, Virginia 18 (now the
county-boundary area between Floyd and Carroll Counties, slightly above
the North Carolina line). From here, Booker apparently moved south, as
a subsequent census attributes to his son David a circa 1800 birth in
North Carolina.19 From there, they trekked westward into Floyd County,
Kentucky, where Booker's household is enumerated-as white-in l8lO. 20 .
Other early-nineteenth-century censuses and land records (not discussed
by Kennedy) place Booker and his grown children in both Floyd and its
offshoot counties, Pike and Lawrence. 21 By 1830, this Mullins family
had backwashed from eastern Kentucky into southwestern Virginia’s
Russell County, where Booker is recorded as a free white male, aged
sixty to seventy.22 He last appears, 1860, in Wise County-aged
ninety-six, of Virginia birth, and still white.23
A
more-serious genealogical problem, for which the evidence apparently
confused Kennedy, is the identification of Booker's wife. She is said
by Kennedy (without documentation) to be "Nancy Judith Stanley" in each
of the four tables presented on pages 48, 49, 50, and 51. However, the
text at page 48 discusses her as "Booker's wife, Nancy Stanley." At
page 49, the text comments: "Old Booker may have had a previous
marriage, possibly before his marriage to Nancy Stanley. The name
Judith Bunch, or Bench, has occasionally been tied to Booker."
Virginia's eighteenth- and nineteenth-century marriage records are
highly incomplete. 24 Surviving records show that Judith Stanley
married one of the several contemporary Booker Mullinses during 1803 in
Franklin County, Virginia. However, this is not Kennedy's ancestral
couple, because this Booker Mullins is shown consistently on the
Franklin County censuses from 1810 through 1860.25 Meanwhile, the
Booker Mullins from whom Kennedy descends obviously had married by 1790
or so, because he had a son James) who wed in 1812 and another
(Sherwood) who married in 1813. 26
The only evidence this reviewer
has found of a Booker Mullins to Nancy {-} marriage is the 1835 union
of Booker Mullins, son Sherwood and grandson of "Old Booker," to Nancy
Potter in Pike County, Kentucky. 27 Chronology suggests that Kennedy
attributed to "Old Booker" born circa 1764 some of the post-1835
children of this younger Booker and Nancy Mullins 28 .There were also
at least two, possibly three, other men named Booker Mullins in the
area of eastern Kentucky and southwestern Virginia between 1790 and
186O - classed as white, yet another problem relating to the author's
genealogical reconstruction of the Mullins family is his statement that
the famed Mahala "Big Haley" (Collins) Mullins, of the Hancock County,
Tennessee, Melungeons, "married into" the family of his own ancestor's
son, Wilson Mullins; and he cited Wilson's birth in 1824 (p.48). Mahala
herself was born in 1824; and the 1880 census shows that her husband,
John Mullins (whose identity Kennedy appears not to know), was born
about 1815. Kennedy does not show a relationship between her husband
and his own family line. In any case, John was too old to have been a
son of Wilson.
Mullins-Adkins-Hall
Pursuing the
Mullinses through the federal censuses also yields evidence that
Kennedy did not fully exploit the available sources. His genealogical
table for the Hall family (p.36) cites two consecutive Hall-Mullins
marriages: Isham Hall I (dates unknown) to Mary Mullins and Isham Hall
II (1785-1856) to Jane Mullins. His only statement regarding the
origins of either Isham is that the one born 1785 "claimed to be from
Greenbriar County, Virginia" (p.30). For ancestor Henry 28 Clyde
Runyon, comp., Marriage Bonds of Pike County, Kentucky, 1822-1865
(Belfry, Ky: p.p., 1984), 78, citing file no. 431.
Kennedy
apparently confused the 26-year-old Sherrard [Sherwood] Mullins (wife
Anna i.e., Nancy-aged 22), in Booker's 1860 household, with the
much-older Sherwood who was Booker's son. Certainly Sherrard and Anna
cannot have been the parents of Andrew Jackson "BrandyJack" Mullins,
who was born in 1834 (Kennedy, p.50) 29 Two were heads of households on
the 1840 cens. of Pike Co., Ky one, age 40-50; another, 20- 30. See
Jesse Stewart and Leah Stewart, comps., 1840 Federal Census of Pike
County, Kentucky (n.p. n.p., Ca. 1990), 3. The 1850 cens. more fully
identifies them as Booker Mullins (age 55, wife Mary; Floyd Co.) and
Booker Mullens (age 31, wife Nancy; adjacent Pike Co.). See Barbara,
Byron, and Samuel Sistle; 1850 Census, Eastern Ky. Counties of
Breathitt, Caner, Floyd, Greenup, Johnson, Lawrence, Letcher, Morgan,
Perry, and Pike (Nashville: Byron Sistler and Associates, 1994, 68, 301.
One Booker Mullins married Polly
Johnson, daughter of William Johnson, 16 Apffl 1821; see Skeens, Floyd
Kentucky, Consent and Marriage Book, p.136. A second Booker wed Polly
Newsom, daughter of Harrison Newsom, 5 December 1829; see Runyon,
Marriage Bonds of Pike County, 43, file no.235. Subsequently, there
appears Booker Mullins Sr., age 68, b. Va., with wife Polly, age 60, b.
N.C., on the 1870 U.S. cens., Pike Co., Ky., dist. 9, Robinson Creek,
dwell. 26, fam. 26; and Booker Mullins, age 70, with wife Polly, 65,
both born in Va., on the 1880 U.S. cens., Pike Co., Ky., 9th precinct,
Upper Elkhorn Creek, dwell 16, fam. 16. All listings identify them as
white. 30 Gowen Research Foundation, Electronic Library, file
GOWENMS.OO2, closed stacks, printout dated 30 March 1996, unpaginated.
Available to foundation members via sysop, 806-796-0456. For the
foundation, contact Arlee Gowen, 5708 Gary Ave., Lubbock, TX 79413.
Mahala Collins was the daughter of Solomon and Virginia Jane "Gincie"
(Goins) Collins. Adkins, whose granddaughter married in 18511 the only
stated origin is "1700s, North Carolina" (p. 70). Yet the 1850 census
of Russell County, Virginia, is more explicit. It is one of the
serendipitous enumerations on which the marshal recorded the county of
birth for all persons born within the Cornmonwealth. Both Isham Hall
and Henry Adkins are assigned a birth in Franklin County, Virginia-the
place Kennedy speculates for Booker Mullins.
The Adkins
family sketches, brief as they are, have several other problems. Census
records state that Stacy was the given name of Wilson Adkins's wife, 32
not the surname, as Kennedy gives it (p. 45). Those census records also
place Stacy's and
Wilson's
births at circa 1817. Thus, it seems highly questionable that they were
the grandparents of John Bennett Jr. who Kennedy says (without
documentation) was born in 1836. Likewise, Sarah Jane Adkins, born
about 1851, was probably not the great~granddaughter of "Henry Adkins
and Sally Bowman" (p.70), because the sixtyfive-year-old Henry did not
marry Sally (Bowman) Vance until 1857. 33 The fact that Sarah Jane was
in their household in 1860 does not make her Sally's progeny. 34 If the
author concludes that the relationship of Henry and Sally predated
their marriage, this must be documented.
Colley
There are
major problems in Kennedy's presentation of this line. Reconciling them
would not only add another generation, but might also alter the
direction of the line. Kennedy states that his grandmother, Tessie
Colley, was born in 1899 as the daughter
of Major
Pelham Colley (no dates) and Hester Kiser, and granddaughter of James
and Emma (Farrell) Colley (p. 77). Beyond this, he provides an 1815
birth year for Emma Farrell-a point that, if correct, would require
Major Colley to be born no later than 1860-65 and easily before then.
But Major does not look that old in the 1902 photograph Kennedy
includes (p. 80).
A published
study of the family reveals that in1884, James Colley resided in
Buchanan County, Virginia, which had been taken from Wise in 1858. The
1880 census of Buchanan identifies "Magor P" Colley as the
seven-year-old son of Jasper and Margaret Colley, not James and Emma.
Kennedy's claimed James and Emma Colley were in the same magisterial
district, but in no census year does their household include a Jasper.
The marriage
record of "M. P. Colley and E. H. Kier" confirms that Major's parents
were indeed "J. S. and Margaret. "39 In
turn, the
marriage record for Jasper Colley and Margaret Sutherland, dated 1866,
40 identifies Jasper as a son of John and Anna Colley-not James and
Emma. Extensive interviews with Margaret (Sutherland) Colley were
published in Sutherland's
Pioneer
Recollections of Southern VA. They, and other interviews in the same
collection, indicate that in 1879, Jasper S. Colley was elected a
delegate to the Virginia state legislature, as a Democrat. 41 That fact
stands in marked contrast to Kennedy's statements regarding ethnic
prejudice against his forebears.
Jasper's
birth occurred, apparently in 1841. 42-making his father, John, too old
to have been a son of James and Emma (Farrell) Colley, whose births are
placed at circa 1826 by the previously cited censuses. Thus, the issue
raised by Kennedy as to whether Emma Farrell's mother was "one of the
'Black Jacksons"' (p.77) is irrelevant to his lineage.
It would
appear from the oral histories presented by Southerland that John
Colley was a brother of James Hopkins. The Hopkins line is shown with
no date - just question marks- for the three generations outlined prior
to the birth of the 1899 ancestor (p.54). Yet there is no apparent
reason for the omission. The author knew the residential location. A
ten-minute check of the 1880 Soundex for Kentucky would have located
the family households under consideration and provided at least an
approximation of the needed data.© 43
Horne
Various
inconsistencies appear in this family line. Kennedy states that Jesse
Home supposedly was born in 1777 and Pleasant Horne in 1781, "which
would have made him fourteen [sic] at his son's birth" (p.67). Since
Kennedy provides no citation to the source of the information on
Pleasant Horne's supposed parentage and Jesse Home's supposed age, the
reader cannot decide whether the author's math is wrong or whether one
of the dates is merely mistyped. However, there is no reason to assume
that it represents deliberately "fabricated roots" to hide Melungeon
origins (p.67). Pleasant Horne is counted as white on the Russell
County censuses of at least 1830, 1850, and 1860, as are all other
Horne family members in those counties.
Kiser
In the Kiser
family, both generational confusion and incomplete research appear
again. Kennedy shows the Reverend Elihu Kiser as a son of Joseph Kiser
and Susannah Stacey, for whom he has no dates (p.79). Other, more
explicit, family accounts place Elihu Kiser as a son of Abednego and
Mary (Jessee) Kiser, and a grandson of Joseph Kiser and Susannah
Stacey.45 For the Reverend Abednego Kiser and his wife Margaret Jessee
(p.79), another direct ancestral couple, Kennedy's table shows only
question marks for years of birth and death-although the couple appears
regularly in the census records 46 Miscellaneous Problems Other
statements indicate that the author is unaware of common genealogical
factors. In addition to the suppositions of racial cover-up because of
spelling variation in surnames, Kennedy asserts that Virginia residents
marrying in contiguous Kentucky counties in the second half of the
nineteenth century did so to avoid Virginia's supposedly
more-restrictive miscegenation laws (pp.36-37). However, the published
Wise County, Virginia, marriages reveal that the practice of marrying
across the state line went both ways;47 and Pike County, Kentucky,
marriage bonds indicate that the practice there was shared by many
families Kennedy does not classify as "Melungeon." Cross-border
marriages are commonly found in the course of genealogical research and
often stem from such geographic factors as flooded streams, washed-out
bridges, and impassable roads-or the ordinary convenience of an
individual family's access to one courthouse over another.
Other errors
should have been caught by more-thoughtful proofreading. Dick Colley's
wife is said to be Christina (Crissa) Counts in one place and Lucretia
"Crissa" Counts just eleven lines later (p. 77) .49 After two listings
of "'Preacher' John Hopkin + (wed] Hannah Osborne," a third shows
"'Preacher' John Osborne + Hannah Osborne" (pp.54-55). Kennedy states
that Ida M. Powers Kennedy "died in childbirth bringing [his] tenacious
grandfather into the world." Yet the same page offers a formal family
photograph that, the caption says, shows Ida holding this same child-a
large baby, already sitting erect (p.72). Kennedy comments that the
photograph "shows the tired, battered face of a much older woman than
the nineteen-year-old Ida supposedly was, and he attributes this to
-the difficulties of Melungeon existence. IIt would seem more logical
that the woman was someone else-perhaps a grandmother who helped to
rear the children after the young mother's death.
Review
Essay: The Melungeons
The index is
seriously incomplete, particularly as to personal names of Kennedy 's
ancestors. In the sixty pages that comprise the two "genealogy"
chapters, the indexing covers only people who are not ancestor with
just four exceptions: two Collies who were said to have had military
experience earned an index entry, as did two Mullenses, to whose name
the word gene is attached. It is inconceivable that the author
considers all his forebears less worthy than the pirate Redbeard or El
Cid (both of whom merited an entry). The appendix offers several lists
of surnames associated with seven well-known triracial groups of the
South. The source of the data is not referenced. Some were apparently
taken from Gilbert's 1948 Surving Indian Groups, but a number of other
names are added without distinguishing them from those Gilbert
documented.
HISTORICAL
ORIGINS
Kennedy
introduces his thesis (p. xiii) with an identification of Melungeons as
a people of apparent Mediterranean descent who may have settled the
Appalachian wilderness as early as 1567-some forty years before
Jamestown" (p. xiij). In support, he refers to a post-Revolutionary
report by John Sevier of a Tennessee settlement of Indians with unusual
skin color-although his source for Sevier's account (the first of his
often-irrelevant or unreliable footnotes to general history) is a 1963
newspaper write-up. Apparently, he did not consult a dependable version
of Sevier's observations. His final two chapters-titled "Genesis: From
Whence We Come" and "Putting it All Together"-survey six prevailing
theories about Melungeon origins and add more of his own. They also
demonstrate a lack of understanding of various cultures about which he
writes. From the late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth centuries, to
which he traces his family lines (however sloppy the presentation),
Kennedy plummets back through time to the eighth century to discuss
Spanish Moors, the Ottoman Empire, Turkish naval heroes, and early
Portuguese explorers. To bolster the credibility of his proposed
connections, he converts the given name of a well-known Melungeon,
"Vardy" Collins, to the Arabic Navarrh (p.18), rather than to the solid
pioneer Vardeman that the man actually was.51 After two Common British
American surnames such as Bell, Collier, Collins, Moore, Osborne,
Perry, and Rivers become Spanish and Portuguese. Common Southern given
names such as Sylvester, Louisa, and-yes, even Elvis-are offered as
evidence of Mediterranean ancestry.
Pursuing this
theme, Kennedy contends that Melungeons were named for historic sites
in Spain and quotes another confused writer's statement that Spanish
and Portuguese settlers in America named children for cities or regions
back home (p. 107). To the contrary, Catholic churches and settlements
in Catholic countries traditionally have been named for saints; and
Catholic canons historically have required that children be given
saints' names at baptism. And among early Catholic immigrants to the
New World, children commonly were named by and for their godparents,
not by parents nostalgic over their own birthplaces. Amid these
theories, Kennedy leaps around from Moorish pirates to Sir Walter
Raleigh's "lost' colony," to "Moorish French Huguenots," to Berber
captives in Brazil-with an excursus to New Amsterdam. Historical
accuracy continues to suffer from careless interpretations of events
unfamiliar to the author-for example, the assertion that "in the late
1780s [sic} a group of French Acadians escaped from their English
captors in South Carolina and disappeared into the Appalachians" (p.
44) That date is three decades after the Acadians were shipped from
Nova Scotia and were detained briefly on the beaches of South Carolina.
From there, two small bands did escape, during winter and struck
out-overland for French settlements in Ohio; only two individuals known
have survived the hard trek. To assume that the majority simply
abandoned their relatives along the way, to stay with the Indians, is
to misunderstand gravely the piously Catholic, tightly intermarried
Acadian families. In any event, white Acadians would not add
swarthiness to Appalachian.52
In sum,
Kennedy seems to conclude that Iberian settlers mingled with the
"Powhatan~Pamunkey~Moorish [sic] population" of pre- colonial Virginia,
then with other racial groups, to create the "Melungeon characteristics
of olive, ruddy, and copper- colored skins; blue and brown eyes... and
wavy and straight black, as well as reddish-tinted, hair" (p.124).
Phoenician seamen, shipwrecked Portuguese, Spanish soldiers, Arabic
galley slaves of Sir Francis Drake, and a host of Indian tribes are
added to the array of potential although undocumented-Melungeon
ancestors. Kennedy also concludes that "tracking the movements of
Melungeon families is not .... . we [sic] moved from region to region
and intermarried with so many diverse cultures" (p. 142). In no way
could his family's frequent migrations be considered out of the
ordinary in comparison to other Southern frontier families-and his
ancestors were definitely not from obscure or nearly invisible
families. Many were prominent early pioneers of Appalachia. Some held
public office. And skilled genealogists are demonstrating that the
origins of these pioneers are traceable. Several lines have been
published in local histories and historical periodicals.53 The sheer
size of the families means that properly documented genealogies will be
challenging undertakings. However, their region has experienced
comparatively little record loss. Sound studies can be accomplished-if
one focuses upon actual evidence, rather than exotic, far-flung myths.
The author's
theme of ancestral persecution by other community settlers is difficult
to uphold. The early families of which he writes were large ones,
moving in groups to areas they thickly settled; their numerous children
married into other pioneer families of Appalachia. After eliminating
the collateral relatives, who was left to oppress them? Kennedy's own
accounts of twentieth-century oppressions and slights reveal that
members of these families who had risen in social rank were among those
who discriminated against those of lesser social rank. The question
arises whether the issue of prejudice was one of ethnicity or
socioeconomics. If the motto of Romantic literature was "any time but
now, and any place but here," then Kennedy's motto appears to be, "any
ancestry is preferable to northern European." This leads to serious
disconnects among his themes of one specific family, general Melungeon
origins, and U.S. attitudes on ethnicity. While pushing extreme
political correctness in lamenting how whites oppressed the Melungeons
because of their dark skin, 54 he has-through his redefinition of the
word Melungeon-essentially invented a "new race" (p. xiii), a new and
historically nonexistent oppressed minority that belies his own
ancestry.
FOOTNOTES
1. This
omission contrasts strikingly with T. Tipton Biggs, Knowing Mama: The
Discovery of a Family (Omaha, Neb: privately printed, ca.1980), which
painstakingly tracks the progress of Huntington. disease through an
extended family from the 1820s until the present.
2. The
claimed line from Pocahontas is said to have come through Benjamin
Bowling born 1734)and wife Martha "Patsy" Phelps. This couple (although
Kennedy does not state so) married 1751-53 in Albemarle Co., Va. See
Families of Yancey County, North Carolina 5 (March 1988): 5; and
"Osborne and Related Families," Pike County, Kentucky, 1821-1983;
Historical Papers, no.5 (Pikeville: Pike Co. Hist. Soc., 1983), 61.
Kennedy's connection depends on an assumption that the Benjamin who
married Martha is the same one who later wed Charity Larrimore. This
assertion was published in 1985 by W. W .Lake, "The Pocahontas
Connection," The Mountain Empire Genealogical Quarterly 4 (Winter
1985): 214-7; but it has been challenged by David Risner, "Bolling
Family Information," The Mountain Empire Genealogical Quarterly 7
(Winter 1988): 273-74, who presents contrary evidence. Kennedy points
out that the ascending line of the Benjamin who married Martha Phelps
is itself unproved, although often claimed-as in R. Marshall Shepherd,
"John Rolfe Lineage," The East Kentuckian: A Journal of Genealogy and
History 25 (September 1989): 34-35. For a general pro-and-con
discussion of the limited evidence available, see Alexander R. Bolling
Jr., The Bolling Family: Eight Centuries of Growth (Baltimore: Gateway
Press, 1990), 114-17.
3. Because
this essay is a book review rather than a full-fledged genealogical
study, all of the author's families have not been comprehensively
reconstructed. The present analysis is designed to indicate the
direction that future research should take.
4. For a
synopsis of this rich body of Sizemore oral history, see Jerry Wright
Jordan, comp., Cherokee by Blood: Records of Eastern Cherokee Ancestry
in the U.S. Court of Claims, 1906-1910, vol.1, Application’s to 1550
(Bowie, Md.: Heritage Books, 1987), 126-81 Kennedy (p.24) cites 1725 as
the date of Sizemore's birth. This is incompatible with the claims-case
testimony, which holds that Ned's father fought in the Revolution and
that two of his brothers were in the War of 1812. The oral histories
may have been confused, but Kennedy does not cite corrective evidence
or address the conflict. The testimony also does not document Kennedy's
stated Sizemore connection to his Phipps family. Jeffrey C. Weaver,
Eastern Cherokee Applications, Southwest Virginia Ancestors 4 (Winter
1990): 33, indicates that Edward ("Old Ned") Sizemore was a Loyalist,
"hung by Col. Ben Cleveland on the Tory Oak in Wilkesboro NC." This
must be a different generation from the "Old Ned" in the Sizemore
testimony, who died in the 1850s. Regarding the ethnicity of this
family and their census labels, consider for example, George and Owen
Sizemore and their household members who are all considered white on
the 1800 Ashe Co., N. C., census. See Eleanor Baker Reeves, A Factual
History of Early Ashe County, North Carolina: Its People, Places and
Events (Tex.: Taylor Publishing Co., 1986), 67. The 1820 census. of
Ashe Co. similarly cites the households of George (Sr and Jr), Edward,
and Owen as white. See Dorothy Williams Potter, 1820 Federal Census of
North Carolina, vol. 2, Ashe County (Tullahoma, Tenn.: privately
printed, 1970), 13. (ASHE COUNTY NC ONLINE CENSUS DATA )
5. Quoted by
David Hackett Fischer, Albion's Seed: Fou, British Folkways in America
(N.Y: Oxford Univ. Press, 1989), 718. Kennedy (p.67) also proposes a
deliberate fabrication of origins to explain another common type of
genealogical carelessness-- an alleged birthdate of 1781 for Pleasant
Home, said to be the son of Jesse Home, born 1777.
6. As
previously noted, this reviewer has not retraced the author's lines
through every available record. However, for all sources consulted and
all lines traced, results were consistent. As representative examples:
(1) The
author repeatedly applies the term fpc to ancestral lines in Ashe Co.,
N.C. (pp.46.55-56. 69-70). While antebellum Ashe certainly had free
persons of color, Kennedy's named ancestors were not among them. The
1820 census of Ashe (as a specific) lists six fpc house hold but
Kennedy's Phipps, Swindle, White, Tolliver, and Osborn families were
all classed there on as white. See Potter, 1820 Federal Census of North
Carolina. . - Ashe County, 6, 11-12, 14-l6, 18-19. (2) As late as 1860,
Kennedy's Swindle line was classified as white in Western Virginia; see
1860 U.S. cens., Wise Co., Va., pp. 28O~1, dwelling 110, family 110.
(3) For 1870, Kennedy's lines of Kennedy, Kiser, Mullins, Nash, Powers,
and Swindle (Russell and Wise Cos., Va.), were all considered white;
the Hopkinses (found by the reviewer in Pike Co., Ky.), were deemed
white there also.
7. For
example, see Larry and Pat Taylor, eds., Wise County, Virginia,
Marriage Register, 1887-19C0 (Clintwood, Va.: Southwest Va. Ancestors,
1994); and Dorcas McDaniel Hobbs and John Walter Picklesheimer Sr.,
comps., Pike County, Kentucky, Death Records, 1849-1909 (n.p.: p.p.,
ca. 1990).
8. Sherrie S.
McLeRoy and William R. Mc LeRoy, Strangers in their Midst: The Free
Black Population of Amherst County, Virginia (Bowie, Md.: Heritage
Books, 1993), 194,218.299. Garland is mentioned herein as administrator
of the estate of John Redcross in 1802 and as the 1840 head of a white
household that also contained 8 fpc and 40 slaves.
9. Nash's
wealth extended considerably beyond land. The 1840 cens. credits him
with 17 slaves. He is enumerated as a white male, aged 30-40, sharing
his home with a white female, aged 20-30, and a white male, aged 15-20.
See Elizabeth M. Carpenter, ed., 1840 Census, Russell County, Virginia
(n.p.: p.p., Ca. 1991), 16.
10. The
assertions of nineteenth century legal persecution in the adjacent
counties of Wise, Russell, and Buchanan are also difficult to accept
when one reads the 1880 census. entry for Kennedy's claimed
great.great.grandparents, James Colley and Emma Farrel (whom he
describes, p.77, as one of the 'Black Jacksons' W) Not only did the
census taker label the family white, but he identified their son
William as the county sheriff. See 1880 U.S. census., Buchanan Co.,
Va., Sand Lake Magisterial Dist., enum. dist. 16, sheet 45, dwell. 35,
fam. 35.
11. For N.C.,
see Revised Statutes of the State of North Carolina, Passed by the
General Assembly, 1836-37, 2 vols. (Raleigh: Turner and Hughes, 1837),
chap. Ill, "An Act Concerning Slaves and Free persons of color." This
source recapitulates prior laws. For Tenn., see Returnj. Meigs and
William F. Cooper, eds., Code of Tennessee Exacted by the General
Assembly of 1857-'8 (Nashville: E.G. Eastman and Co., 1858), 41, 687,
which recounts prior acts; Joshua W Caldwell, Studies in the
Constitutional History of Tennessee, 2d ed. (Cincinnati: Robert Clarke
Co., 1907), 202-03; Robert. Shannon, ed., The Constitution of the State
of Tennessee (Nashville: Law Book Pubi. Co., 1915), 374-76; and Thos.
H. CoIdwell, Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the Supreme
Court of Tennessee during the Years 1868-9 (Louisville, Ky.: Fetter Law
Book Co., 1902), 231-67.
12. Census
takers, of course, did not wield a judicial pen. Their returns had no
judicial authority. Again the author appears unfamiliar with record
sources. Kennedy's theme of political discrimination against his
ancestors is clearly at odds here with various evidences, for example,
the subsequently discussed election of his ancestor to the Va. state
legislature (as a Democrat) in 1879. If one cannot vote, one cannot
hold office.
13. Elizabeth
M. Carpenter, ed., 1830 Census of Russell County, Virginia (Clintwood,
Va.: Mullins Princing Royalty, ca. 1991), 11.
14.1850 U.S.
census., Russell Co., Va., pp. 323b-324, dwells. 1438-1439, fams.
1438-1439.
15.1860 U.S.
census., Scott Co., Va., pp. 35~55, dwell. 816, fam. 815.1880 U.S.
census., Wise Co., Va., enum. dist. 101, sheet 24, dwell. 249, fam.
249. Kennedy does not address the genealogical significance of the 1860
census., which shows Wickliff Nash in the home of his father, William
Nash, age 59. At that time, William apparently had a much-younger wife,
Virginia, age 29. The wife and mother cited by Kennedy, Margaret Ramey,
was still alive that year, because she later appears as "mother" and
"white" in her son's household; see 1880 U.S. census., Wise Co., Va.,
enum. dist. 101, sheet 24, dwell. 249, fam. 249. Other Rameys
repeatedly appear as white on southwest Va. and eastern Ky. returns.
The following 1850 enumeration entry also should be examined carefully
for relevance: 1850 U.S. census., Scott Co., Va., pop. sch., p.422,
dwell./fam. 967: Margaret Ramey, 28, female; Louisa J., 10, female;
Wickliffe, 8, male; Sally, 60, female; and Worthington Brooks, 20,
male, born in N.C. All the Rameys were said to have been born in Va.
Presumably all were considered white, because they, like others on the
page, have no entry to the contrary in the column for race.
16. For the
turn-of the century racial status of this family, whose "darkness" is
heavily treated by Kennedy, see 1900 U.S. census., Wise Co., Va., enum.
dist. 123, sheet 3, fam. 4, dwell. 42, citing the widowed Louisa (Hall)
Nash and her children as white.
17. This
assumption may have been made on the basis of a birthplace provided for
67-year-old James Mullins on an 1857 marriage record. See John C.
Mullins, wise County', Virginia, Marriage register, 1856-1886 (n.p.:
p.p., 1981), 9, no.97. Franklin Co. was created from Henry and Bedford
Cos. Prior to that, in the 1770s, family names associated with this
Mullins line appear in Henry Co. See Lela C. Adams, Henry County,
Virgina, Deed Book I and II Bassett, Va.: p.p., 1975), 30,44,82,91; and
Lela C. Adams, 1778-1780 Tax List of Henry County, Virginia (Bassett,
Va.: p.p., 1973), 16, 27-28, 41.
18. Nettie
Schreiner-Yantis, ed., Montgomery County Virginia, Circa 1790: A
Comprehensive Study-Including the 1789 Tax Lists, Abstracts of Over 800
Land Surveys ~ Data Concerning Migration (Springfield, Va.: p-p.,
1972), 98.
19.1860 U.S.
census., Wise Co., Va., p. 325, dwell. 400, fam. 400. A Mullins line
that went from Pittsylvania Co., Va., into Burke Co., N.C., and from
there into Russell Co., Va., has been put into print also. See Gary M.
Mullins, "The Ancestral Lineage of Ollie Cox Mullins," The Mountain
Empire Genealogical Quarterly 7 (Winter 1988): 21~38. This article is
most helpful in distinguishing the various Mullins lines that came into
Russell Co. by different routes than the one taken by Booker Mullins.
20.1810 U.S.
census., Floyd Co., Ky., p.105. See also 1820 U.S. cens., Floyd Co.,
Ky., p.37.
21. In 1823,
Booker Mullins was in the part of Floyd that had just been cutaway to
create Lawrence; see Clayton R. Cox, "Pike County, Ky., Deed Book A,
1820-1828," The East Kentuckian 22 (March 1986): 16. Joe R. Skeens,
comp., Floyd County, Kentucky, Consent and Marriage Book, 1808-1851
(Prestonsburg, Ky.: p.p., 1987), 21, shows the marriages of several
Mullins men, including that of Kennedy's traced ancestor, David
Mullins, to Jenny Short on 3 February 1820.
Pike Co. was
created from Floyd in 1822. For more on the family's activities there,
see Dorcas Hobbs, "First Tax List of 1823," in Leonard Roberts, Frank
Forsyth, and Claire Kelly, eds., Pike County, Kentucky, 1822-1967,
Historical Papers, no.2 (Pikeville: Pike Co. Hist. Soc., 1976), 4-12
(which includes Booker Mullins, John Booker Mullins, and ten other
Mullins landowners on Shelby Creek).
22.
Carpenter, 1830 Census of Russell County, 17-18.
23.1860 U.S.
cens., Wise Co., Va., p. 325, dwell. 401, fam. 401.
24. See the
1844 affidavit on this point that was published by Mary McCampbell Bell
as "Who Is to Blame'." NGS Quarterly 75 (September 1987): 193.
25. Marshall
Wingfield, Marriage Bonds of Franklin County, 1786-1858; Transcribed
from the Original Records, Annotated and Alphabetically Arranged
(Baltimore: Genealogical Pubi. Co., 1973), 166. According to the 1850
enumeration (dwell. 1496, fam. 1490), this Booker was aged 71; his wife
Judith, 67. In 1860 (dwell.
335, fam.
331), Booker was 80 and Judith was 75. See Karen Mann Robuck, comp.,
Franklin County, Virginia,
1850 6,, 1860
Censuses (Baltimore: Gateway Press, 1990), 131. A married Judy Mullins,
aged 63 and born in Va., died in August 1849 in Pike Co., Ky.; see
Dorcas McDaniel Hobbs and John Walter Picklesheimer Sr., Pike County,
Kentucky, Death Records, 1849-1909 (n.p.: p.p., ca. 1990). She could
not have been Judith Stanley, who married in 1803. If the death
record's age is correct, it is doubtful that she bore the older
children of Kennedy's Booker.
26. James
Mullins married Agnes Little in 1812; see Julius Little, "Isaac Little
and his Descendants," The East Kentuckian 21 June 1985): 4. The actual
marriage record does not list James's father. However, Sherwood Mullins
was named as son of Booker Mullins when he wed Mary Roberts in 1813;
see Skeens, Floyd County, Kentucky, Consent and Marriage Book, 21.
27. Clyde
Runyon, comp., Marriage Bonds of Pike County, Kentucky, 1822-1865
(Belfry, Ky.: p.p., .1984), 78, citing file no.431.
28. Kennedy
apparently confused the 26-year-old Sherrard [Sherwood] Mullins (wife
Anna-i.e., Nancy-aged 22), in Booker's 1860 household, with the
much-older Sherwood who was Booker's son. Certainly Sherrard and Anna
cannot have been the parents ofAndrew Jackson "BrandyJack" Mullins, who
was born in 1834 (Kennedy, p.50)
29. Two were
heads of households on the 1840 cens. of Pike Co., Ky.: one, age 40-50;
another, 20- 30. See Jesse Stewart and Leah Stewart, comps., 1840
Federal Census of Pike County, Kentucky (n.p.: n.p., Ca. 1990), 3. The
1850 cens. more fully identifies them as Booker Mullins (age 55, wife
Mary; Floyd Co.) and Booker Mullens (age 31, wife Nancy; adjacent Pike
Co.). See Barbara, Byron, and Samuel Sistle; 1850 Census, Eastern Ky.
Counties of Breathitt, Caner, Floyd, Greenup, Johnson, Lawrence,
Letcher, Morgan, Perry, and Pike (Nashville: Byron Sistler and
Associates, 1994), 68, 301. Crie Booker Mullins married Polly Johnson,
daughter of William Johnson, 16 Apffl 1821; see Skeens, Floyd Kentucky,
Consent and Marriage Book, p.136. A second Booker wed Polly Newsom,
daughter of Harrison Newsom, 5 December 1829; see Runyon, Marriage
Bonds of Pike County, 43, file no.235. Subsequently, there appears
Booker MuHins Sr., age 68, b. Va., with wife Polly, age 60, b. N.C., on
the 1870 U.S. cens., Pike Co., Ky., dist. 9, Robinson Creek, dwell. 26,
fam. 26; and Booker Mullins, age 70, with wife Polly, 65, hoth born in
Va., on the 1880 U.S. cens., Pike Co., Ky., 9th precinct, Upper Elkhorn
Creek, dwelL 16, fam. 16. All listings identify them as white.
30. Gowen
Research Foundation, Electronic Library, file GOWENMS.OO2, closed
stacks, printout dated 30 March 1996, unpaginated. Available to
foundation members via sysop, 806-796-0456. For the foundation, contact
Arlee Gowen, 5708 Gary Ave., Lubbock, TX 79413. Mahala Collins was the
daughter of Solomon and Virginia Jane "Gincie" (Goins) Collins.©
31. 1850 U.S.
cens., Russell Co., Va., p.25O dwell. 230, fam. 230, and pp.3231-324.
dwell. 1438, fam. 1438.
32.1850 U.S.
cens., Russell Co., Va., p. 247b, dwell. 393, fam. 393; 1860 U.S.
cens., Wise Co., Va., p.311. dwell. 304, fam. 304; also 1880 U.S. cens.
Wise Co., Va.; enum. dist. 101, sheet 18, dwell. 187, fam. 187, for
Wilson and Stacy.
33. John C.
Mullins, comp., Wise County, Virginia. Marriage Register, 1856-1886
(np.: pp., 1981), 4. The adult woman listed in the Adkins household on
the 1850 cens. is also identified as Sarah, age 46, born in Tenn; see
1850 U.S. cens., Russell Co., Va., p. 250, dwell. 230, fam. 230. In
1860, the Sarah in his household is listed as age 52, born in Tenn; see
1860 U.S. cens., Wise Co., Va., p.296, dwell. 216, fam. 216. Possibly
Sarah (Bowman) Vance was living with Henry, out of wedlock, in 1850;
but it was not uncommon for men in this era to marry consecutive women
of the same given name.
34.1860 U.S.
cens., Wise Co., Va., p.296. dwell 216, fam. 216.
35. Hetty S.
Sutherland, "Colley Family Information," Mountain Empire Genealogical
Quarterly 6 (Spring 1987): 27, based on contemporary manuscripts in the
Lyman C. Draper Manuscripts, State Historical Society of Wis., at
Madison
36. 188O US.
cens., Buchanan Co., enum. dist. 16, sheet 16, dwell. 131, fam. 131,
which lists Jasper S. Colley, male, 37, farmer; with Margaret, female,
34, wife, keeping house; Sumpter, 12, son; Flora M., 10, daughter;
Major P, 7, Rose B., 5, daughter; James L C., 2, son; Margarate V.,
1/12, b. in May, daughter. All were born in Va. of Va. born parents..
All family members were white.
37. 1850 U.S.
cens., Buchanan Co., VL, Sand Lake Magisterial Dist., enum. dist. 16,
sheet 45, dwell./ fam. 35, shows James Colley, male, 64, farmer; Emma,
female, 64, wife; William B, male, 21, son, sheriff; Mary Church,
female, 15, servant. All the Colleys were born in VA. of VA.
parentage-and all were white.
38.1850 U.S.
cens., Russell Co., Va., p. 252b, dwell. 426, fam. 462, lists James
Colley, 34, male, farmer $2,000 real estate; Emma, 34, female; Orpha,
11; Martha, 9; Josephine, 7; Richard, 5; Jane, 4; and Lucretia, 2. All
were born in Russell Co., Va.-and all were white. 1860 U.S. cens.,
Buchanan Co.1 Va., pop. sch., Grundy dis. pp.792-93, dwell. 233, fam.
233, shows James Colley, 45, male, farmer; with Emma, 45, Richard, 16;
Jane, 14; Barbary, 10; Cosbey, 7; Unicy, 4; and William B, 2-again, all
white. See also Jesse Stewart and Leah Stewart, comps., 1860 Census,
Buchanan County, Virginia (Clintwood, Va.: John C. Mullins Royalty,
1984), 29, and 1870 Census, Buchanan County, Virginia (Clintwood, Va.:
John C. Mullins, ca. 1986), 42. The Josephine of the 1850 James Colley
household was roughly the same age as Jasper. However, Josephine" was
not the enumerator's mis-rendering of 'Jasper" This Josephine married
at "age 16," on 11 March 1858, to Jonathan Sifers. As Josephine
"Scyphers," she was interviewed by local historians in 1921, 1922, and
1931. For the maniage record, see Rhonda S. Roberson, Marriage Register
2 of Russell County, Va.: 1853-1870 (Clintwood, Va.: Mullins Printing,
ca. 1991), 19. For the interviews, see Elihu Jasper Sutherland and
Hetty Swindall Sutherland, Pioneer Recollections of Southwest Virginia
(Clintwood, Va.: Mullins Printing, 1984), 32~28.
39. Nancy
Clark Baker; Dickenson County, Virginia, Marriage Register, 1, 1880-1900
Wise1 Va.:The Southwest Virginia ca. 1986), 83.
40. On 22
December 1866, Jasper Colley, age 26, single, son of John and Anna, married
Margaret Sutherland, 20, single,
daughter of
James and Nancy. See Otis R. Yates and Linda R. Yates, comps., Some Marriages
Recorded m Buchanan Co.,
Virginia,
1858-1884; Some Deaths (n.p.: p.p., ca. 1990), 17.
41.
Sutherland and Sutherland, Pioneer Recollections, 62-64, 67.
42. Jasper S.
Colley, wife Margaret, and their younger children are on the 1900 cens. of
Dickenson Co., Va.,
whereon he is said to have been born in Va. during December 1841, to be age 58, and
to have been married
33 years. Both of his parents are said to have been Va. natives also. See Joan (Short)
Vanover; Barbara
Kendrick) Vanover; and Gregory Lynn Vanover, Dickenson County, VA, 1900 Census (Pound Va, p.p., 1984), 22.
43. US
census., Floyd Co., Ky., enum. dist. 35, sheer 24, dwells. 190-191,
fams. 191-192.©
44.
Carpenter, 1830 CENSUS of Russell, 12.1850 U.S. cens., Russell Co.,
Va., p.257, dwell. 520, fam. 520.1860 U.S. cens., Russell Co., p.216,
dwell. 1457, fam. 1457. There are three incompletely documented but
nonetheless useful articles recently published on the Hornes: Emory L.
Hamilton, "The Horne Family of Southwest Virginia,"Mountain Empire
Genealogical Quarterly 4 (Summer 1985): 115-24; Robert D. Plumlee, "The
Horn Family," Mountain Empire Genealogical Quarterly 7 (Spring 1988):
2-5; and Helen Peoples, "Horne Family Information," Mountain Empire
Genealogical Quarterly 7 (Summer 1988): 123-31. Plumlee and Peoples
trace this Horne line to Goochland Co., Va. From there, it passed
through Louisa Co., Va., and Surry Co., N.C. Jesse Horn is a head of
household in Stokes Co., NC., on the 1790 census.; so he was almost
certainly older than thirteen at that date. He had settled in Scott
Co., Va., by 1820.
45. Vivian
Dickinson Bales, "Keyser/Kiser," The East Kentuckian 28 (December
1992Y: 4.
46. Margaret
Jessee appears with her parents in 1850. See 1850 U.S. cens., Russell
Co., Va., pp. 221b-222, dwell. 55, fain. 55. Abednego is also listed in
his parents' household: p. 254b, dwell. 488, fam. 488. In 1860, they
appear as a married couple; see 1860 U.S. census., Russell Co., p.51,
dwell. 328, fain. 328. They are also listed for 1880 and 1900. In all
years they are identified as white.
47. Muilins,
Wise County, ~Marriage Register', 1856-1886, passim.
48. Runyon,
Marriage Bonds of Pike County , passim.
49. The 1850
cens. entry for Richard Colley names the adult woman in his household,
probably his wife, as Lucretia; see 1850 U.S. census., Russell Co.,
Va., pp. 252~253, dwell. 463, fam. 563. The context of the household
raises the possibility that Lucretia was a second wife. Kennedy perhaps
drew the name Christina from Mary D. Fugate, comp., Implied Marriages
of Russell County, Va. Maiden names of wives mentioned in the wills and
deeds of Russell Counry prior to 1860, and in the earliest records of
Lee and Scott counties, formed from Russell in 1793 and 1814
respectively (Athens, Ga.: Iberian Publishing Co., 1991), 14. There,
Richard Colley is said to be married to Christina or Christiner;
daughter of John and Margaret Counts. However, Kennedy gives the name
of John Counts's wife and Chrissa Counts's mother as Mary Magdalme'
(p.77).
50. William
Harlen Gilbert Jr. Surving Indian Groups of the Eastern United States:
From the Smithsonian Report for 1948, Pages 407-438 (Washington, D.C.:
Government Printing Office, 1949). The Melungeon surnames listed by
Gilbert are Bolen, Collins, Denham, Fields, Freeman, Gann, Gibson,
Goins, Gorbens, Graham, Lawson, Maloney, Mullins, Noel, Piniore,
Sexton, and Wright.
51. For an
introduction to the Vardeman family of Baptist ministers who left so
many namesakes on the frontier, see). H. Spencer, A History of Kentucky
Baptists, from 1769 to 1885, Including More Than 800 Biographical
Sketches, 2 vols. (Cincinnati: J. R. Baumes, 1885), 1: 232-33. See also
Gowen Research Foundation, Electronic Manuscript, 15 November 1994, p.8.
52. For a
better understanding of the Acadians, see the various studies published
by the leading Acadian scholar, Carl A. Brasseaux-particularly
“Scattered to the Wind": Dispersal and Wanderings of the Acadians,
1755-1809 (Lafayette, La.: Univ. of Southwestern Louisiana, 1991), and
The Founding of New Acadia Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press,
1957).
53. In
addition to those previously cited, see The Heritage of Wise County and
the City of Norton, 1856~1993, vol. 1 (n.p.: Wise Co. Hist. Soc., ca.
1993), 36~72; Ginger Rose Senter, "The Kennedys of Dickenson County,
Virginia," The Mountain Empire Genealogy Quarterly 3 (Winter 1984):
253-54; John C. Mullins, "Ancestry Chart," Southwest Virginia Ancestors
2 (Winter 1988): 6-1O; and Geneva Stamper, "Stamper Family," Southwest
Virginia Ancestors 3 (Summer 1989): 33-38.
54. On this
theme, Kennedy makes much (pp. S6-89) of a list of mixed-race names
circulated in 1943 by W A. Plecker, M.D., State Registrar of Vital
Statistics for the Commonwealth of Virginia-decrying that "this twisted
human being" should not have been allowed such "brutal and punitive
control" over Kennedy's people. Curiously, the Plecker list includes
only one of the southwestern Virginia surnames that appear on Kennedy's
family tree (Mullins); and in that case, Plecker specified that it
referred to "chiefly Tennessee Melungeons" (italics added), not to Va.
Mullinses. (A copy of this document is in the files of the reviewer.)
To quote the common genealogical caution, "the name's the same" does
not mean the family is. On the theme of ethnic persecution, readers
should be aware that Plecker's attempt to "identify" light-skinned Va.
families with African ancestry was not a rare incident directed at
Melungeons or the Va. Indians whom Kennedy embraces. Similar efforts
were conducted by various state registrars who certainly had no known
Melungeons in their midst. The trend was an ill-designed and ill-fated
offshoot of the eugenics movement that flourished in the early
twentieth century but died out in the wake of World War II, as the
public became aware of excesses such as those attempted by Plecker. For
more on the subject, see Thomas H. Roderick et al., "Files of the
Eugenics Record Office: A Resource for Genealogists," NGS Quarterly 82
(June 1994): 97-113.
Originally
printed in the National Genealogy Society Quarterly
Vol. 84, No. 2,
June 1996
Virginia Easley
DeMarce, Ph.D
5635 North
Twenty-fifth Road
Arlington, VA
22207
Dr. DeMarce is
a historian in the Branch of Acknowledgment and Research, Bureau of
Indian Affairs and past president of the National Genealogical Society.
Among numerous genealogical and historical studies, she has authored
two prior essays in the NGS Quarterly (March 1992 and March 1993)
treating Melungeons and other triracial isolate groups.
Elizabeth Shown
Mills, CG, CGL, FASG
Editor,
National Genealogical Society Quarterly
PO Box 861406,
University of Alabama Station
Tuscaloosa, AL
35486
Material used with permission.
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