Melungeon Surnames with Jewish Parallels
ADAMS (this one is fairly obvious!) ADKINS (<Agin? a Berber clan, many
forms, including Adkinson, alternatively
Welsh “Arthur’s kin”; there is also
Aikin with its variants, probably from
Aachen/Aix, Charlemagne’s capital anda
populous medieval Jewish town on the
border of France and Germany)
BARKERBARNES BECKLER BELCHER (=Belzer?)
BELL(<bal, ‘lord’ in Hebrew) BENNETT
(=Lat. “blessed,” Heb.Baruch)BERRY
BIGGS BOLEN BOLTON BOWLIN BOWLING BOWMAN
(also Boon/Boone, Boen and Bean, all
from Buen?) BRANHAM BROGAN BULLION
BURTON (Welsh) BYRD CAMPBELL (fr.
Campobello, Campanello?) CARRICO (Lat.
“person having to do with shipor keel,
shipbuilder”?) CARTER (“wheelwright” or
“wagoner’) CASTEEL (=native of Castille)
CAUDILL (prob. same as Caldwell) CHAVIS
(I believe this is same as Chavers,
Kaffers “friend” in Hebrew, a common
greeting at temple services) CLARK
(English for Schreiber, “writer”)
COAL (because many Jews were
miners/exporters) COFFEY (Hebrew/Arabic
version of Cohen, the priestly caste of
the Hebrews) COLE (German Kohl,
coal) COLEMAN COLES COLLEY COLLIER
(Welsh) COLLINS (said to be Portuguese;
I think this is Port. for “hillsman” or
something like Collina)
COLLINSWORTHCOLYER (“coal miner”) COUNTS
(a Latinized form of Kuntz,
meaning “art” in German and Yiddish, a
kuntzmann was an artist, also
appears as Countiss, Koonce, etc., may
also be related to English “count,
counting house”) COX COXE CROW CUMBA
CUMBO CUMBOW (all the same as “gumbo,”
an African word) CURRY (<Khouri, Arabic)
DAVIS (son of David, usu. Welsh)
DENHAMDOOLEY (also Doolin) DORTON DULA
(Berber) DYE (also Dial, an important
Lumbee name) ELY EVANS (Welsh royalty,
also Bevans) FIELDS FREEMAN (alsoFrank,
Franks) FRENCH (an indication of orig.
but probably Sephardic andLusitanian or
Spanish before) GALLAGHER (=”one from
Gaul”?) GANN GARLANDGIBSON (also Gipson)
GOINGS (also Goin, could come from
either goyim, “gentiles,” or
Gaon, “princely teacher,” or Gawen,
Gaelic for “smith”)GORVENS GOWAN GOWEN
GRAHAM GWINN (Heb. “fortunate”) HALL
HAMMOND HENDRICKSHENDRIX (<Henriques
filtered through Dutch) HILL HILLMAN
(see note forCollier) HOPKINS (Welsh,
the “kin of Hop”) JACKSON (>son of
Jacob) KEITHE (also Kieff, “one from
Kiev?”) KENNEDY (same as Gundy, Candy,
Canada<Candia, the Turkish name for
Crete esp. its capital Hieraklion) KISER
(<Kaiser, the German emperor) LAWSON
(son of a Levite) LOPES (Port. “Wolves”)
LUCASMAGGARD MALONE MARTIN MINER MINOR
(could be “one from Minorca”) MIZER
(maybe related to German May) MOORE
MORLEY MOSELY MOZINGO (African)
MULLINS(<Molina?) NASH NICCANS (also
Nickens, Nicholas, Nichols, all from
patron saint of Bari, So. Italy) NOEL
(corruption of Noah?) ORR OSBORN
(Ottoman) OSBORNE PERRY (fr. Peiras?)
PHELPS PHIPPS(from Feibush, Forbes,
Philip: Phillips is the most common
Jewish surname in Britain today) POLLY
(German-Polish diminuitive Pauly, "son
of Paul") POWERS PRUITT (also appears as
Prevatte)RAMEY (orig. Rhamy and said to
be Israeli and Egyptian) RASNICK
REAVESREEVES (fr. Rivieros) RICE (Reis,
German and Yiddish for “rice”)
RIDDLERIVERS ROBERSON (could come from
Roper, Raper, ropero“seller of
old clothes, rags,” a common Jewish
occupation) ROBERTSON ROBINSON
SEXTONSHEPHARD (lit. means “Sephardic”)
SHORT(T) (from Ger. Kurz, Kurtz)
SIZEMORE(<Cismor, “a Moor who collects
taxes”?) STALLARD (“one who works with
steel”) STANLEY STEEL SWINDALL TACKETT
TAYLOR (Schneider in
Yiddish/German)TIPTON TOLLIVER (fr.
Talliaferro, “blacksmith”; Telfair is a
gentilized form, as in the Telfair
Museum in Savannah) TURNER (=carpenter,
a trade)VANOVER(Dutch, often shorted to
Vann) WATTS (apparently same as Waite,
maybe same as Aytes, Yates, Goetz, Getz;
the Cherokee Gen. Stand Waitie was the
last Confederate commander to surrender)
WHITE WHITED (also Whitehead)
WILLIAMS(usu. Welsh) WILLIS WILSON
WRIGHT (occupation name) WYATT (prob.
same asHyatt, which is Huguenot; see
also Watts). This list omits the common
Melungeon name, found only among
Melungeons, DRIGGERS (from Rodriguez, an
example of Jews “Smith-Jonesing”
themselves since this was one of the
most common surnames in Spain; it is
originally Visigothic). Also, COOPER and
BLEVINSusually appear. The former is
Welsh and means literally “sons of
Levi”(ab/ap + Levin). In Hirschman’s
Melungeon DNA study, Blevins matched a
person of strict Lithuanian Jewish
descent. Cooper is an Askenazic
anglicized form of Kupfer and Kupper(e).
Cooper could indicate a cabinetmaker,
toolmaker, molder or minter as well as
barrel maker. As a Jewish surname Cooper
also appears as Shapiro, Sapiro,
Shaeffer, Spier, Spiro, Sofer, Hooper,
Kooper, Coopper, Kieffer, Kuepfer,
Cuoper, Coupard etc. The Anglo-Norman
Coupar(d) may have meant “cup bearer”
and been a title similar to Stuart
(“steward”).
An authoritative source on the origin of
Jewish surnames is Joseph Jacobs’article
in the old Jewish Encyclopedia.
Certain Melungeons (read:Jews) cast
their lot in with the red nations,
whether Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw or
Chickamaugan, while others went the
white way, explaining their ethnicity as
Black Dutch, Black Irish and the like. A
perfect example of the currents and
counter-currents at play during this
period, the driving force always being
the search for a Jewish promised land,
is the case of the Mt. Tabor Indian
community of Yowani Indians that formed
in the 1820s and ‘30s in East Texas.
Known today as the Thompson-Choctaw
Indian Descendants Association, a
non-recognized tribe, it included
Cherokees, Choctaws and Chickasaws, as
well as declared whites. Some of the
names on the tribe’s rolls are Adair,
Bean, Bell, Candy, Goss (i.e., Gist),
Martin, Thompson, Jones, Cooper,
Alexander, Holloway, McCoy, Jackson
(“sons of Jacob”), Cox, McNair (“candle”
in Hebrew), Vann, Waitie and Taylor—a
virtual compendium of crypto-Jewish
surnames. (See The Texas Band of Choctaw
Indians. The story of
white-Indian relations in North America
has normally been told as one giant
unfolding systematic theft. Angie Debo,
Vine Deloria and A. Alvarez are some of
its better-known chroniclers. Guilt,
anger, deception and misunderstanding
dominate among its themes. According to
both the apologists and the
revolutionists, European colonists took
the red man’s lives, land, livelihood,
language and culture; they are even
trying today to rob the Indian of his
spirituality and identity. But the
Sephardic Jewish colonists consistently
went against this pattern. Where their
English, French and Spanish counterparts
did little more than take, the Jews and
Moors gave. They gave large families of
children, leadership abilities, trading
relationships, writing and computational
skills, building and construction
know-how, legal advice, spinning wheels,
looms, forges, smithies, ferries, cows,
horses, peach orchards, beautiful arts
and crafts. In the instances of Will
Thomas, the Carolina colonel who
safeguarded the Eastern Cherokees’
existence, and Euchella v. Welsh, an
early Supreme Court case (1824), they
even attempted to give land and preserve
a type of sovereignty.
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FIG. 17. SEQUOYAH (GEORGE GUESS), the only American Indian
to be included in the hall of
fame in Washington, was a
silversmith by trade, the son of
Wataugan Nathaniel Gist
(1733-1796) by his mixed blood
wife known as Wurteh (“Girty”).
The Gists were a Baltimore
family of Jews with important
trading concerns. Joseph Gist, a
London relative, headed one of
the largest shipping insurance
companies in the world. They
married with the Howards,
Looneys, Murrays, Gratzes and
Coopers. Photo courtesy
University of Georgia Hargrave
Rare Book Room. |
FIG. 18. MOSES LOONEY (1780-1855) is shown in Masonic
regalia in this rare photograph
taken shortly before his death
in Lawrence Co., Alabama. He
married Sequoyah’s niece, Mary
Guess. He descends from Robert
Looney of Ballagilley, Isle of
Man, a member of the
Spanish-Portuguese Jewish
mercantile family Luna. Robert
Looney brought his entire family
to Philadelphia in 1732 and they
became one of 70 families in a
major settlement of the Virginia
uplands under Alexander Ross and
Morgan Bryan in 1735. The
Looneys were prominent in
Tennessee history for building
forts, making roads and
commanding armies. John Looney,
Moses’ cousin, died a Cherokee
chief. Photo courtesy of
Wanda Looney Buss. |
In conclusion, we have looked at a
number of pre-Revolutionary Tennessee
families who were both Melungeon and
Jewish—more precisely, crypto-Jewish.
All intermarried for religious motives,
effectively keeping their secrets within
the family. In some cases, such as the
Gists, Rameys, Alexanders and Coopers,
we have contemporary records and
evidence naming them as Jews. I have
argued that Judaism was the bond that
brought them together on the frontier. I
have instanced several communities, from
the Lumbees to the Texas Choctaws, and
we could explore these further in
extremely worthwhile fashion now that
the “truth” is known. How could Elzina
Grimwood have hoped that her niece and
nephew, both schoolteachers themselves,
would give up! It is simply too alluring
a mystery. That it is an injustice to
omit our ancestors’ names and deeds from
the storyline of American history and
saga of worldwide Jewry is a point I
wish to make in closing. No matter their
descendants have largely chosen to be
non-Jewish. These were Jews—Jews
integrally involved in the American
experience—road builders, Indian
traders, land agents, ferry operators,
inn keepers, gunsmiths, bankers,
lawyers, doctors, soldiers and sheriffs.
It is a proud heritage of vision and
courage, one that should be cherished by
their descendants as well as other
beneficiaries.
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