Melungeon History Pt. 1

Speech by Wayne Winkler, president of the Melungeon Historical Society, at the MHS Melungeon History and DNA Conference, held on June 12, 2009 in Rogersville, TN.

The audio and video is a bit shaky at first, but improves.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Melungeon
• Melungeons
• history
• Hancock
• Hawkins
• Co
• TN
• Collins
• Gibson
• Goins
• Mullins
• Bell
• Minor

[candycreekcove]

Thank you so much for taping this! I am Robin Goins a direct descendant from Alexander Goins and have always wondered why my dad and Uncles would snub their noses at me when I would even mention the word Melungeon. Now I know. I didn't realize that it was a racial slur word!! I didn't have a clue so I'll listen on and see what else I can learn since my fathers people are mum about the subject...it's almost taboo or something for them. Thank you!!

[klmullins65]

Hi Robin, glad you liked the vids. Are you descended from Alex Goins of Hancock Co, TN? If so, we're probably related....I THINK I descend from Alexander...I KNOW I'm related in any case. My g-g-grandmother, Viney Johnson Mullins, married Alfred Goins, Alex's son, after she divorced her first husband, Wilson Mullins. Viney's son, Landon Mullins, married a Marry Goins, and they lived around where Goins Chapel is now, so she probably came from Alex's family. Kevin klmullins_2000@yahoo.com

[candycreekcove]

@klmullins65 Hey Kevin! If you go on down the list you will see a Freeling Goins and that was my great grandfather. My father is Fred Goins. Thank you all so much for all the hard work that you've done. I've read and did research myself for years and really appreciate everything that everyone is doing to trace our heritage. I still have family living in Hancock County they never left there.

[klmullins65]

@candycreekcove, ok, I'm familier with Freeling's line, they go thru John Goins, who was brother to my step-g-g-grandfather, Alfred Goins! Both were Civil War vets. Have you ever been to Goins Chapel, on Newmans Ridge? This is where our family was from, and if Im not mistaken, the cemetary there was known as "John Goins Cemetary"...and I also see where you descend from Vardy Collins, the "Melungeon Patriarch"!

[azmhyr]

@angleable1

It really doesn't matter what they were back then. Being a Turk requires you to have full turkish blood.

[shifragri]

5.

European conquest of interior Angola began when Portugal attacked the Mbundu kingdom of Ndongo in the modern Malange district of Angola in a military campaign lasting from 1618-1620. At the time, England and its American colonies had no direct trade in African slaves. Nevertheless, during Portugal's war on Ndongo, Africans began appearing in British Virginia aboard Dutch and English privateers, which specialized in robbing Portuguese merchant-slavers leaving the Angolan port of Luanda.

[shifragri]

4.

Until recently, not much has been known about the Melungeons' African ancestors. New evidence now indicates that the black ancestors of Melungeons were peoples of Kimbundu and Kikongo-speaking Angola and historic Kongo along Africa's lower west coast. The nation of Mbundu in Angola yielded more black ancestors for Melungeons than any other African people.

[shifragri]

3.

From the 1620s, in southern British colonies like Virginia, white northern Europeans intermarried with Indians. They also intermarried with Africans who began entering the American colonies as early as 1619. Melungeons originate from these red, white and black peoples in this period of American history. They began forming identifiable separate mixed communities when the first anti-African laws started restricting some of their freedoms by 1660.

[shifragri]

2.

Among the northern Europeans, the Melungeon ancestors include English, Scot, Irish, Welsh, Dutch, and German parents. North American Indian ancestors include people from the tribes of Powhatan, Mattaponi, Monie, Nansemond, Rappahanock, Pamunkey, Chickahominie, Cherokee (Buffalo Ridge) and Choctaw.

[shifragri]

1.

THREE MAJOR ETHNIC ANCESTORS OF MELUNGEONS

Melungeons are an ethnically diverse group originating in early 1600s Virginia, Carolina, Maryland, and Delaware. Their descendants' later spread into Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, Louisiana, and Texas. The earliest Melungeon ancestors were white northern Europeans, Bantu Africans and North American Indians.

[shifragri]

Read Tim Hashaw

MALUNGU: The African Origin of the American Melungeons

[shifragri]

This is very evident with my own family. My maternal grandmother is "Melungeon", the reason for her family's objection to her marriage to my grandfather who is "Creole", was that her family or at least the elders knew that they had been "passing" for decades.

[shifragri]

Note that there is and no stigma associated with European Americans having Native American ancestry. The stigma is with European Americans having African/African American ancestry no matter how distant. Hence the reason for denying or hiding the TRUTH.

[shifragri]

Some individuals begin to self-identity as Melungeons after reading about the group on a website and discovering their surname on an ever-growing list of "Melungeon-associated" surnames, or discovering certain physical traits or conditions purportedly indicative of such ancestry.[35]