Do Melungeons live in These Appalachian Mountains?

Facts And Myths Throughout the Centuries

By Helen Campbell

"Melungeon" is a term whose origin is still debatable to this very day. No one knows with certainty where and how the term came about, and perhaps we never will.  At the present, modern science is trying to unlock the DNA of people who claim to have inherited the Melungeon culture from their mixed ancestry. 

The photo on the right is of Newmans Ridge, Tennessee nearby the town of Sneedville. This area is just one of many places where Melungeons still exist to this very day. Melungeons have lived and died in these majestic mountains ridges for centuries. You can find hundreds of old family cemeteries scattered throughout the isolated Appalachian Mountain peaks and valleys. Each cemetery is filled with clues that reveal a community. Each grave holds a unique story of a life that once existed at some moment in time. We can learn a lot from these aged family cemeteries. Time and weather has taken a toll on the oldest headstones, each years hundreds of inscriptions are no longer legible.

Sneedville is the county seat of Hancock County. The tucked away town has an elevation of 1169 feet and an estimated population, in 2003, of 1,328. Hancock County was formed in 1844 from Hawkins and Claiborne Counties. Unfortunately, the older records documenting the area's history was lost to a fire. Recently efforts to save historical documents were taken to task by local historians and genealogists. Volunteer archivists on treasure hunt through Hawkins County Courthouse. NEWMANS RIDGE TENNESSEE PHOTO COURTESY OF MAX

 The photo on the left was published in The Tennessee Alumnus Summer 1977. Did the American Eugenics Movement, a social, political, and scientific phenomenon in the first half of twentieth century, sterilized  people of mixed "race" ancestry, causing the Melungeons' extinction? This photo on the left was taken about seventy eight years ago, during the time of the American Eugenics Movement. Who was the 'designators' that marked them as Melungeons? What happened to these "designated" Melungeon families?  Where are they today? Are their grandparents buried in America? Where are their descendents? What does this photo say about who they are?

For over one hundred years journalist have embellished their stories to attract the reader's attention, everyone loves a mystery. "Mysterious," is a common word in numerous writings during the twentieth century. What do archeologist and anthropology divulge about the Melungeons? The term "Tri-racial Isolates" became associated with the Melungeons during end of twentieth century. Did the word "Melungeon" derive from the Angolan-Kimbundu word malungu which originally meant "watercraft? Can this century's Anthrogenealgy reveal the enigma of Melungeons? Where does one begin to sort the facts from fiction?

In the next months melungeons.com will be bringing forth the research done by both scholars and common people. Hopefully, people everywhere will have a better understanding of the evolution of human kinship.

Exhibit #1

In the summer of 1977, a journalist, Pam Vallett, wrote about a sociologist,  C. McCurdy Lipsey, at the  University of Tennessee who was doing research on the Melungeons. Vallett wrote that  C. McCurdy Lipsey told her "..the Melungeons of East Tennessee, a people thought for many years to possess unique racial and cultural characteristics, may not be so unique after all." She also wrote that Lipsey said "Additional research will need to be done on the term "Melungeon" itself. There are several theories as to its origin and meaning."

Read Pam Vallett's, THE MELUNGEON MYSTERY: THE MAKING OF MYTH?