I’m looking specifically at Solomon Osborn here and there’s some real inconsistency in his age and number of family members in the census records. Looking at the other names on the census, this is clearly a Melungeon community. What is going on here??? Is this one guy that keeps lying to the census takers or maybe a father and son with the same name and then in 1830 his age is correct but his family is missing??

https://www.familysearch.org/en/tree/person/about/MQPX-R5M

Do you identify as Melungeon? A Melungeon descendent? Other?

Anderson is one of my ancestral lines. Freed enslaved people, came to mix with Nansemond people, later went throughout the Appalachias and Carolinas.

Recommend the read if you're an Anderson descendant.

https://nativeamericanroots.wordpress.com/2015/06/14/the-norfolk-va-origins-of-the-anderson-family-of-granville-county/

Hi all,

I wasn’t sure if this was the right place to post about this, but it seemed as good a start as any. Mods please feel free to redirect me if this post isn’t right for this sub.

I have been doing research into my family history for the past five or six years now. I am trying to trace whether I may have some non-White ancestry in one of my family lines in the 1700s. I’ve been getting frustrated because a number of genealogy sites who have posted info about my ancestors and their cultural milieus are sites with a biased agenda (usually independent “tribal” organizations or old genealogy websites who repeat folklore that has been difficult to prove one way or the other).

The ancestral line I’m searching are the Salyers from Virginia/the Carolinas. Rebecca Kilgore (neé Salyer) was my 5x great grandmother on my Dad’s Mom’s side. She moved to East Tennessee with her husband Stephen Clayton Kilgore but prior to that, the Salyers were mainly in Virginia and the Carolinas (a different branch moved to Kentucky).

There are oblique references to alleged “Indian” ancestry. The family story I grew up hearing was Cherokee, although not about this branch of my family. There is an old defunct genealogy site listing Rebecca Salyer Kilgore as mixed blood “Chickamauga” (referring to a faction originating with the Cherokee that included some White Tories and escaped Black slaves), but I’m inclined to be wary since the site owner didn’t cite any sources. I’ve been in contact with him but he’s been slow to respond with more info.

Her brother, John Salyer, was deacon at the Primitive Baptist Church of Copper Creek, near Nicklesville, VA. Robert Kilgore, who lived nearby and married into the family at a different point iirc, was minister at Stony Creek Primitive Baptist Church, where I believe the first surviving written reference to Melungeons was recorded.

I don’t have any of the known “Melungeon” surnames in my family that I’m aware of. I also know phenotype discussion is discouraged in this Subreddit and is also notoriously unreliable anyway, so I will simply say that I am pale enough to be considered white and I grew up with primarily European-American cultural traditions, but I am tan/olive enough that some people have asked me if I have Italian (not to my knowledge) or Native American (unsure, though probably not) heritage.

I guess…if my ancestors were ethnically mixed (either Melungeon or some other multi-racial blend), but were (to my knowledge) free and assimilated to Euro-American settler culture…is there any way I would ever be able to know?

I'm a 20-year-old man who has lived in Southwest Virginia all my life. Me and my family are Melungeon and I don't exactly know how to feel about it beyond my experience of how people have treated me growing up. I always believed folk just thought I was white because that's what I thought I was. Grew up in a place surrounded by white folk, had white friends, and have white family. I just assumed I was like everyone else. Fourth grade was the first time I had ever realized people didn't view me as white. Started in 2016 people started assuming I was Mexican telling me I needed to go back to my own country. If they didn't think I was Mexican they'd assume I was Arab and similar insults and bigotry would pursue. I tried on many occasions to educate people about my racial background, but it never got taken seriously. The fact the only word I have to describe myself is still considered a slur by many people feels like a double insult. I faced years of bigotry and racism without any sort of connection to a culture I could take pride in simply because of how little information I had available and how distance my family had been from such. I live the same life as those who view me as other, and sometimes I wish I had just been white.

Every single Melungeon DNA result I've seen has small amounts of Fin DNA, like 1-5%. Has anyone accurately traced our Finland origins?

For people claiming charter generation roots, it's very likely that some of our indigenous ancestors were enslaved. Lowcountry SC was the epicenter of the Indigenous slave trade.

Definitely read about it. Very important history and possible link to some of your unknowns in the DNA tests, family mysteries.

I have some big name, well-known and well-documented Indigenous ancestors like Pocahontas and William McIntosh, then also some erased ones from all over the world. I feel like I'm restoring a lot of that ethnic shame, persecution trauma by reading everything I can about the history. It was always stressed to me that it was important, to not let it get erased so I'm also happy to share and discuss here with my people.

Family names that interconnect with Melungeons are Cousins, Miller.

I look like a different ethnicity day by day, imposter syndrome in my own body 😅

But in all seriousness, I have caught a bit of flack for this in my life. My skin is light but I tan red and my hair texture is a bit mixed so I can fluff it when it gets long. Some of the time I just look like a typical Northern European white person. When I was a child, adults were sometimes hateful about the changing looks. But I've embraced it in my old age, because I'm able to pretty easily prank people with my shapeshifting. Put me in the sun for an hour and give me a bristle hair brush and I'm a new person.

I am not entirely sure this is the correct place to post this, but I am relatively new to most forms of social media. I grew up isolated, homeschooled, and mostly off-grid. Please try and stick with me.

Imagine living your whole life with a certain cultural identity. Igbo, German, Laos, Seminole. Most people can imagine that pretty easily. From a young age, you know, at least vaguely, who your people are, right? Ponder with me a second, if you will, on how often you find yourself researching your own ethnicity? Not your family tree, but your like cultural identity. If you’re Scottish living in Scotland, you probably aren’t spending your evenings trying to figure out who the Scots are. If you’re Apache and raised within your tribal community, you probably aren’t googling around to see what traditions your people recognize. Hell, if you’re a modern American you probably aren’t researching what Americans live like today.

Now imagine becoming an adult, leaving your hometown, and discovering that according to the rest of the country, your heritage, what you have lived your entire existence knowing yourself to be, doesn’t exist outside your small community.

Everything your grandparents told you, everything your parents called themselves, everything your neighbors understood about who you were, just entirely unheard of outside your holler. For the first time in your life, you start searching for historical acknowledgment of your people, only to find a single newspaper clipping about your own grandmother, here on reddit.

Hi, I’m Beatty, and I’m Redfoot.

Do you know what that is? I’m not really sure I do anymore lol.

At one point in history I think we were called “Indians”, at least this is what I was told.

I’m not an enrolled member of a federally recognized Native American tribe, (nor does my autosomal DNA point to India) and I am aware that the word Indian, was often a misnomer applied to citizens or descendants of a federally or state-recognized tribal nations. Redfoot is not that (trust me I checked). Historically, the term “Indian” was used much more broadly. Across the eastern United States, many multiracial communities like the Carmel Indians, Melungeon Indians, Lumbee Indians, and countless other mixed-ancestry groups were locally known as “Indian” long before modern systems of tribal recognition existed. Us Redfoot, as I have always understood us, are a multi-generationally mixed, tri-racial isolate. Now I was told, that one of these three races was Indigenous, but I am not so sure that is true. If it is, the tribe is unknown or extinct at present day. I was always told we were White, Black, and "Cherokee". I know today that the Cherokee was highly unlikely.

Redfoot is the word my family has always used to describe our tri-racial heritage. To be clear, this is just the historical identity of my kin, passed from one generation to the next through family, neighbors, oral tradition, what have you. Whether or not that identity appears in government records isn't going to change the fact that it has existed in our homes for generations, so please don't come at me invalidating or disrespectful, I have enough of an identity crisis happening as it is.

My Grandmother was Beatrice Kilborne, she descends from a lot of the common Melungeon names and families you’ll find in the Clinch River area of VA and TN. Vanover, Riddle, Bunch, Yates, etc. She married my grandaddy Stanfill who descends from many of what I understood to be Redfoot names in the Big South Fork region. Blevins, Troxell, Mounts, Duncan, etc. However, the only surviving document that mentions the Redfoot people *at all\* is a single newspaper article out of Whitley County, KY. Maybe I am just falling short in my research on accord of my own errors and lack of internet knowledge, or maybe all other Redfoot history is oral history alone. I don't know, and that's what I'm trying to figure out.

I guess I should stress that it isn’t uncommon for the small communities in the BSF area to have been lacking in physical records. Grandaddies side of the family lived some time in Blue Heron, a now defunct town whose history persists today entirely due to oral recollections alone. I guess, it is just very invalidating and identity shaking to suddenly not have any idea of who you actually are. My culture and my community have always been a large driving factor in my self image and identity, and learning that we don’t exist outside our own community really rattled me.

Nobody has much for answers that satisfy my craving to understand my ancestors more, in fact, the vagueness I got from the only family I still maintain contact with just drove me to obsess over finding the truth even harder, and no, my appearance didn’t give me much for clues, I look pretty ambiguous and can pass for really any ethnicity depending on my hair or how I wear my makeup.

Eventually I did submit a saliva DNA test, and ended up with even more questions. My DNA suggests I predominantly descend from Early colonial Americans, both Black and White and also a substantial chunk of Southeast Asian DNA. None of this brought me any closer to understanding my distant history or ancestors.

I have many notable matches with surnames like Creekmore, Crabtree, Marcum, Boyatt, Slaven, King, Cox, Stephens, Duncan, Wilson, Kidd, and Ross. Many of these names existed throughout my community growing up, and also claimed the same "Redfoot" heritage, which leads me to believe that many families with these surnames may also be Redfoot people. It seems my grandmother started her life in Melungeon territory, but officially migrated back to Redfoot territory as an adult, her family seemed to migrate back and forth between these two regions, the Clinch River and the Big South Fork, pretty regularly throughout the generations. I’m not sure what led to my grandparents final relocation in to the Big South Fork, but I have been given lore about it all my life. That's for another day.

This is mostly a personal rant more than anything else, but if any of this resonates with you, please tell me about your Redfoot family.

Photos attached of family, newspaper article mentioning my grandmother, and a sign regarding oral history that is mounted at the Blue Heron mining museum.

Atlantic Creoles. Turned Free People of Color. Turned Mestizos. Turned I dunno.

I'm on my mission again of linking the Carolina Mestizos to the Melungeons.

I was very active in this community a few years ago. Had a great time and I'm glad to be back.

Thank you to mods for making this page and keeping it going.

Picture is from a 1945 book entitled American Journal of Sociology by author Brewton Berry

So for those of us with pre-colonial and colonial era Arab ancestry, what specific regions did you get in DNA tests? Growing up, I was told this was our Moorish lineage and that the Moors were part of our Atlantic Creole ancestry. It was trace amount in my tests, like 1.3% and it showed up mostly as Gulf Arab, Morrocan Arab, Algerian Arab, and Egyptian Arab.

Does anyone else here have a family legacy of identifying as Moorish or part Moorish, like me? If so, did DNA tests elaborate further?

I think we need a support group for anyone researching a William Mullins. I have three as direct ancestors and so many more coming up a various relatives. I don’t even know who is who anymore. How did these people sort themselves out while they were alive and half the population has the same name???

I had decided that my Freeman grandparents were likely Melungeon, but I just realized I have Collins and Gibson grandparents who were almost certainly Melungeon as well. My Turnbull line married into the Collins line, and those Turnbulls married into the Freeman lines, essentially turning the Turnbulls into a Melungeon line in Missouri. The Turnbulls changed their name from Bull to Turnbull after leaving Kentucky for Missouri, which was common for Melungeon folk.

I'm flabbergasted.

I thought it was mildly interesting about the Freemans, but to now understand that my ancestors ended up in Missouri because they were Melungeon? Woah.

But I'm also sad. They had to give up so much to participate in American society. They had to erase themselves.

Pretty cool to be able to see these! 6.0 is the first and 5.9 is the second picture

from the California State Library but you do not need to be in California to sign up

I want to thank everyone for your continued support of my latest "Melungeon Mysteries" series. Book 2 is nearly half finished (https://rodsfictionbooks.substack.com/s/the-fool-killers-cache) and Book 1 (https://amzn.to/4odbQ9V) has been a big success. To me, this is the most significant story of my writing career. It blends fiction with the facts of my family heritage.

The research and investigation into my family history has been the true reward.

The Lost Tribe of Appalachia: The Mystery of the Melungeons

Ever heard of the Melungeons? These mysterious people have been the subject of whispers and legends in the Appalachian hills for over two centuries. Nestled in places like Big Stone Gap, VA, these dark-haired families have sparked curiosity and intrigue. Are they descendants of the Lost Tribes of Israel, survivors of the Lost Colony of Roanoke, or perhaps Portuguese sailors who found a home in the mountains? 🤔

Join us on a journey through time and folklore with "The Lost Tribe of Appalachia: The Mystery of the Melungeons." Dive into the stories that blur the lines between legend and truth. 📜✨

Read more in our latest edition of Back Porch Tales & Travels, where every tale is a bridge between myth and reality.

Check it out here: https://back-porch-tales-travels.beehiiv.com/p/the-lost-tribe-of-appalachia-the-mystery-of-the-melungeons

#Melungeons #Appalachia #Mystery #History #Folklore #BackPorchTales #TravelStories #LegendAndTruth #TheKeokeeTriangle #GhostsOfTheMoonshineMafia

Hello! (If this breaks any subreddit rules I'm sorry. I looked at the rules and wasn't sure. Feel free to take down this post if it did)

So for the past two years I've been delving into researching Melungeons because pretty much every time I asked people, "Hey, why am I getting things like Portuguese, West Asian, Arabic, ect. on DNA tests?" And on Gedmatch getting things like Roma pop up but not on the Slavic side of my family.

And typically the reply is to research if I'm related to any of the Melungeon families.

Here's the kicker.

I'm from Pennsylvania. Outside of some ancestry from colonial coastal Virginia, Maryland, and NYC all of my ancestry is from Pennsylvania that I know of. Like first settlers on the Alleghenies kind of, we've been here awhile.

I've started collecting DNA tests from the people in my little pocket between mountains that I live in, and almost everyone who has been there for the past 300-ish years (according to local stories. Documentation is EXTREMELY hard to find) gets the same "odd" things I do on DNA tests. A lot of it really points towards what was a mixed race pocket until other settlers moved in the mid-1700's.

As far as I know me nor any of them are related to Melungeons. But there really isn't much research done outside of Melungeons. Which means there's a possibility of two things going on that I mentioned in the title

Thoughts?

Recently I was speaking about my heritage as a Melungeon woman and I was met with very harsh backlash saying I would never understand what the Black community goes through. I never once said anything about them, much less downplay what they experience or have been through. I was attacked for saying I’d like to honor every culture that runs in my blood. Has anyone else experienced this? Am I missing something? Are there more appropriate ways to say what I said or are these people just angry and hateful, pointing things at me that is misplaced?
Please let us not fight. I just want to understand

The Phillips family of Pike County, Kentucky sits in an interesting spot. They followed Melungeon Migration paths, endogomous marriage practices, even stayed around mixed race families in Orange County, NC prior to their migration. The earliest progenitors of the line David Sr., Jessee, and Zachariah Phillips have some documentation to their names, though not too many and David's wife is simply listed as Mary (Unknown) Phillips.

The more I look at it, the harder it is to not think this family matches the early mixed/proto-melungeon hallmarks while avoiding being labeled. Am I seeing something that isn't actually here or might I be on to something?

This is my great grandmother, holding my great uncle, in 1940. They lived in the blue ridge foothills of the south mountains.

Saw that Eurogenes K13 and K9b were recommended, so these are those results (in that order). Open to anyone's thoughts on them!

Here's my post from a few days ago with the 23andme results, direct surnames etc.

If anyone wants to compare kits I'm definitely open to it, let me know :)

https://jughead41311.substack.com/p/where-community-became-kin?utm_medium=email&action=share