European Tapestries, Middle Eastern Kilims,
& Appalachian Quilts:
The Weaving of America
By Phyllis and Julia Starnes
Some trips we take are of the mind and not the body. Sometimes all you know about yourself, or think you know about yourself, changes or gets such additions as to make the picture different enough to feel like a change. It’s amazing how the catalyst for such a moment can be something as simple as a clipping from a newspaper.
In 2002 my mother sent me a copy of a clipping from the Kingsport Times-News because it mentioned a friend from my school days. “I thought you and Billy might be interested in reading this…” she had written in blue ink across the article right under the title “Solving a puzzle to relieve the pain.” She thought our only interest would be in the fact that the article featured someone that we’d known. I don’t think that she realized that she had set my feet upon a path that would carry my family and me to the other side of the world and back again.
I found the article to be of interest for a very different reason than the one my mother had thought would interest me. It was my first introduction to Brent Kennedy and to the term Familial Mediterranean Fever (FMF).
For as long as I can remember I have never felt good. There are days that it’s a challenge to put one foot in front of the other. My daughter says that some days you operate on the principal of “might as well…” As in, “I’m up so I might as well do what needs doing,” she says. I read that article and I heard every ache and every complaint I’d ever had in it. I was driven to learn more, but the more I learned the more there was to know.
I bought Brent’s book, _The Melungeons: The Resurrection of a Proud People_ because I wanted to know more about how he came to be diagnosed with FMF—a genetic disorder found most often in people of non- Ashkenazi Jewish, Armenian, Arab and Turkish backgrounds. As I was reading the book I kept thinking that his family names sounded so familiar. A look at a family tree that had been kept up away from sight revealed that Brent’s ancestors were the brothers, sisters and cousins to my own ancestors. If nothing else—I had found a new cousin.
My mystery illness might finally have a name! Armed with the newspaper clipping, my family tree, and Brent’s book I returned to my primary physician. A few months earlier in a state of frustration at not being able to find a reason for all my aches and pains he had at last said, “Don’t come back, Phyllis; there’s nothing I can do for you.” On the basis that I was related to Brent and had suffered the same symptoms, my doctor gave me a referral to Dr. Christopher Morris in Kingsport, TN who had been mentioned in the article. I think he figured that this might at last put a name to my condition or at least prove that it was “all in my head. “
I found out in my appointment with Dr. Morris that diagnosing Familial Mediterranean Fever is often a process of eliminating anything else that might explain the symptoms. There has to be the genetic connection—at that point to Brent and some few other patients that had also been diagnosed—and then all the tests to eliminate other illnesses that have similar symptoms. Once the other possible culprits are eliminated then a trial of Colchicine could be prescribed. A positive reaction to the medication is a positive indicator of FMF. I have been taking Colchicine for six years now. There are still days that are challenging, but the episodes of joint pain, sore throat, low grade fevers, pleurisy, and unexplained abdominal pain are less frequent and shorter in duration than before my introduction to Colchicine. My husband and two of three children are also taking Colchicine. It has made life better for all of us. Only someone who has suffered a nameless condition can ever truly appreciate how it feels just to have a name for what ails you. It’s not enough to know the what, though; I had to know the how. How could a family from southwest Virginia be diagnosed with a condition for which there was no connection to our known origins?
This was the start of my travels down paper trails, to county courthouses, family reunions with people I hardly knew or didn’t know at all. The names keep multiplying as I go back through time tracking generations. Adams, Berry, Beverly, Bowling, Campbell, Carter, Caudill, Cole, Counts, Cox, Coxe, Fields, Freeman, Gibson, Hill, Jackson, Kiser, Lawson, Lucas, Mosely, Mullins, Osborn, Osborne, Powers, Pruitt, Rasnick, Robinson, Shephard, Short, Stallard, Stanley, Stewart, Taylor, Tipton, Turner, Williams, Williamson and others.
My family has lived by and played in and on the banks of the Clinch River and Stony Creek for generations—the same Stony Creek where the old Primitive Baptist church of the same name once stood—the same Stony Creek church that is often put forth as the place where the earliest known written reference to the word “melungins” occurred in 1813. The listing of membership from that time is a “Who’s Who” of mine and my husband’s family trees. The original church building was washed away by floods a long time ago. My husband’s family and my mother were members at the Pine Grove church that replaced it. My mother sometimes took my daughters to services there when they stayed with her during summer breaks. It was still a one room church house with a curtain to pull for Sunday school, and an outhouse. Baptisms were still performed in the deep spot right behind it in Stony Creek—the same deep spot that served as a swimming hole on Saturdays.
Our family trees have long and deep roots; I am still following threads here and there trying to sort them out. The roots and branches are intertwined so that in some places it’s hard to tell where one tree ends and the other begins. I have reached some ends that I can no longer follow. I am sometimes like a squirrel whose weight bears down on the branch too much so that I must leap to another one for a while. My search has led me to counties outside of Scott County, Virginia such as Lee, Wise, Russell, Dickenson, Patrick, Louisa, and Cumberland, Virginia. I have crossed the border to Tennessee to Hawkins, Hancock, Grainger, Greene, Claiborne, Sullivan and Washington Counties. I’ve made trips to Letcher, Perry, and Clay county Kentucky chasing down a name or a possible ancestor. I have found that at some point the paper trail runs thin—fires, floods, and politics can be blamed for records being lost or destroyed. In all of the trails that I can follow this way, I still haven’t found out how a Southeastern Appalachian family could possibly have a Mediterranean medical disorder.
My husband and I attended the Fourth Union hosted by the Melungeon Heritage Association (MHA) in Kingsport, TN in 2002 right after I had first visited with Dr. Morris. I had only been taking Colchicine for a few weeks at that point. This was the event where the preliminary results of the first Melungeon DNA project were announced by Dr. Kevin Jones. It is unfortunate that project wasn’t able to be followed to its end due to Dr. Jones’ illness, but this event did have some lasting effects for my family in a personal way. I met Cousin Brent and found cousins, Beth (Caldwell Hirschman), Donald (Panther-Yates), and Nancy (Sparks Morrison) among others; although, at the time I didn’t realize that they were my cousins. Their research has added to that of my own and we have all been able to fill in pieces of the puzzles that we have been working to put together individually. Subsequent MHA events for many years have been like extended family reunions.
The first time I ever saw Donald Panther-Yates, before he’d even spoken, I told my husband, “I don’t know who he is, but I want to pick his brain.” Once I heard him speak at Fourth Union—his topic, “Jewish Indian: Who’d ‘ve Thunk It!” –I knew he was right. If you’ve ever had an epiphany—a moment when you KNOW the truth when you’ve heard it, this was one of those moments. I had never thought about it. It can only happen if you are willing to accept the possibilities—I was willing to accept this new aspect as to who my ancestors might have been: Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Native American, Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, Romani, Northern African, as well as northern European. I went from being a white, middle class Appalachian American to multi-racial. It was a huge leap and yet I am so much richer for having made it.
My family doesn’t look any different from everyone I grew up with in Fort Blackmore, Virginia. At one point in history, though, a Virginia state official apparently thought that families with my ancestors’ surnames were different enough to warrant being treated differently. Did Walter Plecker cause some members of my family to “whitewash” the family lore? At what point in time did my Native American ancestors decide not to be Native American? Why did my Romani ancestors decide that they weren’t Roma? When did my Mediterranean forefathers and mothers decide that they had to be the same as their neighbors? The truth is lost irretrievably from the prospective of paper records and my family lore has long since forgotten the answers to any of these questions. I now had more clues about our origins, but how to prove it? Science provided me with another avenue to follow. Where a door closes, often a window opens.
The new and upcoming thing in genealogy for a few years now has been the use of genetic and DNA technologies. Once I accepted that the paper trail was never going to go back far enough to find my family’s origins or to explain our medical condition, I decided that this new path was the only one that might possibly provide the links. Paper trails can definitely be lies; blood trails don’t lie but neither can they always be taken at face value and some results only create more questions. We chose to support Donald’s new venture, DNA Consulting, and ordered the mtDNA test for myself and both the Y-DNA and mtDNA test for my husband. My husband’s Y-DNA results showed an Albanian or Macedonian modal (R1b). His mtDNA results (T*) had an exact match in Iceland. My mtDNA came back U2e which is normally considered a European haplogroup, but I have no HVS1 matches and my HVS2 region matches that of a documented Cherokee woman. Answers? Yes. Questions? Yes.
I have continued to chase down paper trails, but my thirst for knowledge has not been quenched. A new type of DNA testing has become feasible for public consumption-autosomal testing has become affordable. DNA Consulting offers a DNA Ethnotyping test—which matches CODIS markers to contemporary populations. It is the same test used to match evidence to victims or suspects in crimes. It is the same test that is used to prove maternity and paternity. The numbers alone won’t give you much information; the profile and map provided with the test answers many questions. They also gave me new topics to research—I’ve found it interesting that many of our individual matches can be connected through historical events and shared borders. I have at this point had a few of my maternal and paternal family members tested as well as my husband, my three daughters and one grandchild. My family’s common matches show that we are, indeed, of northern European descent—with many members having matches in the United Kingdom, France, several Scandinavian countries and the Iberian Peninsula. However, this wasn’t the whole story as the history books would have us believe.
We also had common matches in Morocco, Tunisia, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Greece, and Afghanistan to name a few Middle Eastern matches. Every family member had at least two or more of these countries on their matches and the matches occurred for at least three or more members. There are also matches in several scattered countries including northern India that would indicate a Romani or Gypsy ancestry. There were even some Australian aboriginal matches and some Sub-Saharan African matches.
What may be the most recent additions to the family history are our numerous Native American matches—the top or second match of many family members being a Lumbee match. There are other Native American matches all over North, Central, and South America. None of these can be interpreted as a specific tribal affiliation.
I have at least proven that it’s possible for me to suffer from Familial Mediterranean Fever. I have the ethnic backgrounds most often affected in my genetic makeup. If for no other reason, the decision to have my DNA tested was worth knowing/proving this to be the case. There is one thing that anyone thinking about taking this path should consider—it may disprove as easily as it may prove any stories of origin that your family may have. I do not think that I would have gotten as much out of it, if I hadn’t been willing to accept all the possibilities.
Will I ever track down which ancestors came from where exactly? Most likely not, because I think many of the ancestors that you could say came from here or there are probably hundreds of years back. I believe that most of the mixing of various ethnicities happened before my ancestors came to the Americas. I now believe that I have ancestors that were here prior to my ancestors that I know came before or during the Revolutionary War. I am more firmly than ever an Appalachian American. And I am also Native American, northern European, Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, and Romani (Gypsy). And yet since my ancestors chose (perhaps freely, perhaps out of necessity) to become Anglo-American—I am none of these things. I sometimes feel like I am an “orphan of the world.” I know that many people from the cultures and heritages that are a part of me wouldn’t accept me as a part of them.
It seems to be human nature to want to label and categorize things—including people. It is most definitely human nature to want to belong and to be accepted. I think the greatest challenge in being a multi-racial person in a time when society is supposedly more enlightened is resisting pressure to choose to acknowledge one facet of your heritage over the others in order to wear a certain label. That pressure comes from those that are uncomfortable with you defying their attempt to put you in one category or keep you out of another. It seems to me that if I reject one part of myself to satisfy anyone’s desire to label me or my own longing to belong then I repeat history. I start down the same slippery slope that some ancestor slid down long ago. I hope not to repeat the decision that I consider in the present to have been a mistake in the past.
It is my hope that one day the world will be able to accept the diversity that makes up the foundations of America. It is my hope that one day the average American will recognize that our history is much deeper than what we thought it was. I think that groups like the Melungeon Heritage Association are the best way to start. If we can hold to the belief that the purpose of the MHA is to celebrate the richness of culture and the diversity of heritage that is Appalachia—if we can keep to the belief that we are “one people, all colors,” then we stand the best chance of finding belonging and acceptance for how we are different. We will finally be able to be true to ourselves.
The beauty of Appalachia’s people is that we are much like a tapestry, a kilim or a quilt—it takes many threads of many colors to make a whole.
"I want to thank my friends Phyllis and her daughter Julia, for sharing their most interesting family heritage, with the people around the world." Helen
