Our French Connection

By Ted Klein

It's been a little more than four years since I got started in genealogy. I began with a subscription to the Prodigy online service with a good genealogy bulletin board, and a small list of family members going back three or four generations. I used "Family Tree Maker" computer software to organize my information. At that time I knew very little about my father's family and just a little more about my mother's family. My father's family all came to this country as 19th century immigrants from Germany who went to New York, all with very common German names, and they chose to never look back or keep any family contacts or records. By the first generation, born in this country, one would think that they had written the Declaration of Independence.

The next thing that surprised me was how many names were showing up that sounded French or close to common French names. The first thing that I did was to pick up some local telephone directories in the Appalachian areas that my ancestors came from, and then I had a friend who lives in Paris send me copies of a recent two-volume Paris telephone directory.  I compared names. I was also beginning to find that several English or Irish sounding names, that other people were researching, had actually started out in France, and lost their identities along the way in other countries. My mother was very proud that one of her aunts had married a Crockett, giving us distant-cousin connections with the famed Davy Crockett. Sounds like a good English name, doesn't it? Not when you find out that his grandfather was from France and that the family name had actually been "de Crocquetagne." 

"Daveed, Daveed de Crocquetagne,

king of zee wild frontiere."

Doesn't sound right, does it? However, it's more accurate than the present song!

As I moved on, I found that I was directly descended from or connected with sixteen lines of persons with French names, many of them well disguised because of spelling and pronunciation changes, to match the fact that America had basically become an English-speaking nation. About that same time I corresponded with and talked to Dr. Brent Kennedy who assured me that anyone connected with the Mullins family from the Crane's Nest in Wise County, Virginia, who were among my ancestors, was a statistically very-likely Melungeon descendant.

 I ordered his book and found that I was descended from or connected to a total of seven possibly Melungeon-related surnames; Campbell, Graham, Hall, Keith, Mullins, Ramey and Tackett, all from areas where one would expect  to find a Melungeon population. When we met at the First Union  of Melungeons, Brent checked out the Anatolian bump on the back of my head and all but gave me a written guarantee.

 Within my own lines, I was able to track Remy ancestors back to a tenth great-grandfather, Jacques Remy, born about 1545 in Ivoy, Department of Ardennes in France.  His son, Pierre, was born about 1600 in France. Pierre's son Jacob was born about 1630 in Picardy, Lorraine, France and  died in Westmoreland County, Virginia. This line continued in Virginia and moved to Floyd and Johnson Counties in Kentucky, ending the Remy-named line with my fourth-great grandmother, Dorcas Ramey, who married William Jayne. His name was also of French origin, I believe "de Jean."  His family had come from New York to Kentucky where he and his descendants mostly remained. Their daughter, Eleanor Jayne, married Francis Lemaster, also of French origin.

Their granddaughter, Ellender Lemaster, born in 1849 in Johnson County, Kentucky, married my great-grandfather, Robert Elihu Scarberry, born in the Crane's Nest in Wise County, Virgina in 1850 . He was a son of Nancy Mullins from that same area, who was born around 1806. The family migrated to Johnson County, Kentucky. Robert was an herb-doctor/ veterinarian and did not look very European at all. I have a photo of him from before World War I, with a blanket on his lap, looking very Native American. His son, my grandfather, the Rev. George Washington Scarberry, so closely resembled the known Melungeon, William "Bacon Bill" Mullins, minus the beard, that they could easily have been brothers. As it turns out, they were cousins.

I have traced my Lemasters back to Abraham Lemaistre, born 1639 in Nancy, France. His son Richard Lemaistre was born in 1670 in St. Mary's County in Maryland. Descendants of this line also ended up in Johnson County, Kentucky including my fourth great-grandfather Eleazor Lemaster, whose second wife was my fourth great-grandmother, Machelle Tackett, born 1762  in Virginia. Her ancestors go back to Louis Tacquett, Sr. born about 1675 in France. His grandson Francis, son of Louis, Jr. was born in Prince William County, Virginia.

What about the Mullins? All of the evidence points back at France again, despite my own inability to find out much at all about the family of my Nancy Mullins. A mass  exodus of Huguenot  refugees who had been living in England, after escaping the Catholic government in France, began arriving in South Carolina in 1669. In 1699 and 1700, there were five embarkations to Virginia and the Carolinas. There is a record published  by the Huguenot Society of an Abraham Moulin, born 1665/1670 in France who arrived with an unnamed wife aboard the "Mary and Ann." The family name was immediately changed to Mullins and he died in Albemarle County in Virginia in 1730. There are several records of other Mullins in Virginia and North Carolina during this same period, all from France, either directly or from other places of refuge.

So what's the connection with our Melungeon ancestors?  To start with, Tackett, Ramey and Mullins are all common Melungeon AND French names. When we look at the time lines of the French immigrants and the Melungeons there are many factors in common that seem to go beyond coincidence in terms of their opportunities to meet.

Lets review  some historical events, including some strong Melungeon probabilities, and see how they tie together:

1300       The Ottoman Empire was founded by Sultan Osman I. This was a Muslim empire and the probable source of our Melungeon ancestors.

1453 Constantinople was conquered.

1520   Most of southeastern Europe, the Middle East and North Africa was under the control of the Ottomans.

1521   Martin Luther proclaimed the documents of the Reformation in Europe.

1525      John Calvin led the Protestant Reformation in France and Switzerland.

1535      An edict was proclaimed banning all heretics (non-Catholics) from France. The first Protestant refugees left France for safer areas around Europe.

1540         Substantial French settlements started in Kent and Sussex in England.

1545         There were extensive massacres of Protestants in 22 French towns.

1562         The first civil war in France started over religion, after a major massacre at Champagne. A group of French Huguenots landed at a site on Parris Island, South Carolina near the present-day U.S.Marine Corps base.

1563         A French settlement was started at Fort Caroline, Florida.

1566 Strong circumstantial evidence indicates the existence of a Melungeon settlement on Parris Island in what is now North Carolina. This same year, records indicate the probability of a visit by Sir Walter Raleigh to Roanoke Island with a ship full of Turkish prisoners, only half of whom were taken back to England.

1607   Jamestown, Virginia, an English colony was settled. The settlers were informed by the Native Americans in the area that there were "other persons with short hair" living about four days west of there. Melungeons, French, or who? Maybe both.

1654   Beginning of large-scale French emigration to North America. Many were already in other countries outside of France.

1670   Three shiploads of Huguenot refugees arrived in the Carolinas. This was the beginning of extensive emigration to the Carolinas and Virginia.

1776       The birth pains of a new country began.

1780's   The Scot-Irish arrived, forcing large numbers of Melungeons westward into the Appalachians where their descendants live to this day. Notice that this is long after the French and Melungeons came.

The point that I wish to make is that the Melungeons and the French Protestant refugees seemed to have a lot in common, in similar spaces and times and difficult histories.  It is nothing new that they met and mixed. However, I am proposing that there was a great deal more mixing than is generally attributed historically. I respect the claims that many Melungeon names could have come from Portuguese or Spanish.  However, when I think about it, Portuguese, Spanish and French are all derived from Latin. I have read, for example that Mullins may have come from the Spanish or Portuguese "Molina" which means windmill. However, there is rather direct evidence that it entered the area via French in the name "Moulin" which also means windmill. What about Collins? Is it from the Spanish family name "Colina" which means hill, or from the French "colline" which also means hill.

 The bottom line is, "Would you rather get your name from your captors, or your neighbors?" I close my case on that one. There are many other examples.. By the way there are, to this day, many persons named "Collin" in France and some named "Collins" There are also many variations of Moulin and Moulins. My most reliable textbook remains the Paris telephone directory.

Another indication that our Melungeon ancestors may have mixed with the French is that some of them told people they were French! Dr. Kennedy's book gives several examples. Maybe they knew what they were talking about, at least partially. In talking about the Roberson family, "It was said that the family was actually of French descent."  Why not both French AND Melungeon? There are a number of names in the Paris telephone directory that could be the source of "Roberson" including quite a few "Robertsons" and numerous other names that start with R-O-B-E-R-. One of the Melungeon surnames is "French." That could have been the answer to a clerk who asked the questions, "Who are you?" or "What are you?"

In Floyd Hall's memoirs mentioned in Dr. Kennedy's book, Mr. Hall recounted a "noble French ancestry".  At this point the book states, "..some French undoubtedly did intermarry with the Melungeons". My belief is that MANY French intermarried with the Melungeons as well as with Native Americans, and that there is much more common history than has been acknowledged. I also believe that many families who have a tradition of their ancestors coming from England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Holland, Germany, etc. may need to go back a generation or two to find that these countries were only stopping points in history, leading back to France. The heavy Protestant tradition in French descendants in the South is further indication of early arrivals coinciding with early arrivals of Melungeons. Dr. Kennedy also mentions that an early "code name" for Melungeons in the 1800's was "French." Code names are often based on reality.

By the way, in the last century or two, the French have had a reputation for comfortably blending with and sometimes marrying local persons, even in their colonies, much more than most other Europeans. The word for "foreigner" in several languages, including Arabic and Thai literally translates to "Frenchman." It is "faranji" in standard Arabic, "farangi" in Egyptian Arabic and "faraang" in Thai. This is because the French were well known for "getting around" in several senses of the word!

Let me get back to my family for a couple of minutes. I will give you the rest of my French family names, and ask you to think about how relatively common they still are in Melungeon country. The full list has been published in the "Appalachian Quarterly" and "Under One Sky". There have been no challenges to their French origin :

AMERICAN SPELLINGS               FRENCH SPELLINGS

Auxier                                            Auxerre

Beheler/Behelor                            Beheuliere/Behlert

Haldot                                           Haldat

Hampton                                       Hampton (H silent in French)

Napier                                           Napier/Napias

                                                      Napie/Napee  (Possibly an original Scottish name)

Puckett                                         Pouquette

Robinette                                      Robinette/Robinet

Salyer                                             Salyeres

Sanders                                          Sanders/Sander/Sandere

Sargent                                          Sargent/Sargeant

Sellers                                            Sellers/Seller/Sellier                             

My wife's maternal ancestry is also partially French. Her 6th great-grandfather, the Count Renee de St. Julien, was born July 4, 1669 in Paris, France. He fought the Catholics in France, and then escaped to Ireland where he helped the British fight the Catholics. As a result of distinguished service at the Battle of Boyne, he was awarded land in America. He went to Charleston, South Carolina and later died in 1744 in Winchester, Virginia. Many of his descendants, named Julian, now live in Oklahoma and Texas and show definite signs of Native-American backgrounds in their features. My wife's maternal grandfather was a Pevey, apparently originally Pevet, also traceable to France. That family started in Georgia, moved to Mississippi and on to Oklahoma and Texas.

 They also show strong evidence and some tradition of Native-American background. We HEAR much more about the French who migrated to Canada and New England in the early years. I suspect that the French who went to the Appalachians simply lost their identities sooner, through both choice and non-choice in the assimilation process. These families may or may not all be Melungeon connected, but they certainly showed that Gallic flexibility.

What I want to see come out of what I've been talking about is more research on the French influence in the Appalachians and with their Melungeon cousins. If more Melungeon descendants would go back a little farther in their family searches, I'm convinced that the trail would, in many cases, lead to France and that the French and Melungeons together helped build this area before the rest of the gang arrived.

Vive la France!  Vive le melange......!

                                                Theodore A. (Ted) Klein, Jr.

       Copyright © 1998             14456 Agarita Road

                                                 Austin, Texas 78734

                                                 taklein@ev1.net

Presented at the Second Union of the Melungeons at Clinch Valley College, Wise Virginia, July 10, 1998 and at the 3^rd Union, May 21, 2000. "Our French Connection" (illustrated) is available for purchase through the Wise County Historical Society, P.O. Box 368, Wise, Virginia 24293.

ILLUSTRATIONS: Six generations of descendants of Robert Elihu Scarberry;

         Melungeon, Native American, French, etc.

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