They are a people who live in the appalachian mountains (MD,VA,TN,Ga,Sc, etc) whose origins are thought to be from portugal.They came to america in the 1500s and later married with indian and african indentured servants (who later became slaves as you all know)
Heres a pic of what a Melungeon family looked like in the 1800s
Originally posted by Majestyx Saba they still up there kickin it in the mountains?
Yeah they are
In the past two hours Ive read a lot on them.For one thing they are what you could consider antipathys wetdream, meaning a group of racially mixed people who have historically rejected american societys rule of race.They were categorized as black/colored in the south during slavery, as a result of this they moved deeper into the appalacian mountains.From what Ive read they (and other fractions like them) seem to have a feeling of disgust towards blacks.A good portion of them married with whites to either keep their lands or to remove themselves from the taboo of being colored.There are certain indications of finding out if you have melungeon ancestry.If you have a bump on the back of your head near your neck, thats a usual indication of melungeon ancestry.Another is if you have a ridge on the back of your 4 top front teeth.I have one on one of my teeth but that can be attributed to the native american in my ancestry.From what Ive also read they tend to be a self hating people.
Heres a few pics that are either actual melungeon peoples or those who look similar enough to them that they would have associated themselves to melungeons backs in the 17th,18th and 19th centuries
Commonwealth of Virginia
Department of Health
Bureau of Vital Statistics
Richmond
January 1943
Local Registrars, Physicians, Health
Officers, Nurses, School Superintendents
and Clerks of the Courts
Dear Co-workers:
Our December 1942 letter to local registrars, also mailed to the clerks, set forth the determined effort to escape from the negro race of groups of "free issues," or descendants of the "free mulattoes" of early days, so listed prior to 1865 in the United States census and various types of State records, as distinguished from slave negroes.
Now that these people are playing up the advantages gained by being permitted to give "Indian" as the race of the child's parents on birth certificates, we see the great mistake made in not stopping earlier the organized propagation of this racial falsehood. They have been using the advantage thus gained as an aid to intermarriage into the white race and to attend white schoools, and now for some time, they have been refusing to register with war draft boards as negroes, as required by the boards which are faithfully performing their duties. Three of these negroes from Caroline County were sentenced to prison on January 12 in the United States Court at Richmond for refusing to obey the draft law unless permitted to classify themselves as "Indians."
Some of these mongrels, finding that they have been able to sneak in their birth certificates unchallenged as Inidans are now making a rush to register as white. Upon investigation we find that a few local registrars have been permitting such certificates to pass through their hands unquestioned and without warning our office of the fraud. Those attempting this fraud should be warned that they are liable to a penalty of one year in the penitentiary (Section 5099 of the Code). Several clerks have likewise been actually granting them licenses to marry whites, or at least to marry amongst themselves as Indian or white. The danger of this error always confronts the clerk who does not inquire carefully as to the residence of the woman when he does not have positive information. The law is explicit that the license be issued by the clerk of the county or city in which the woman resides.
As a result of their dispise of blacks (seeing how associating with them would mean they would lose certain rights) and the fact that whites treat them as blacks theyve interbreed for the past 200+ years and you can see the results of that with Wesorts of southern maryland whove developed physical mutations (no joke).
Correction: my wet dreams are not dreams and involve actually women, V-Boy
Your obsession with me is unsettling. If your personal validation hinges on me turning my mind back far enough in time so you can fit in somewhere ... you're in for a rocky ride, sof' boy.
__________________
Quote:
Originally Posted by rbk2003
she was a cool chick ...i didnt even post our entire convo
-rbk2003 wonders aloud why his chances with "Vanessa" have been compromised
The Melungeons usually have been peaceful, and while they are prone to shooting towards flatlanders snooping in the hills (suspected of being revenuers), these expert hunters who live on rabbits and squirrels rarely actually hit the person. They never served in the military (Jean Bible notes about 40 Melungeons served in the Union army in the Civil War, but out of a group of several thousand even then, that is very few) until the First World War, when they were finally allowed to serve in white units (only after presenting the army with affidavits from the county clerks in their home counties saying they were not considered black). In the Second World War, they learned to drive jeeps in the army, and when they returned to the hills, they could then deliver their moonshine to the towns and eliminate the white middlemen. This is their main danger to outsiders, since they frequently will be found driving the mountain roads of northeast Tennessee and southwest Virginia at night at high speeds with their lights out.
In the Civil War, Melungeon sympathy certainly lay with the Union side, since the Southerners treated them with contempt as non-white and were the people who had stolen their valley land. However, they probably did more damage to the North than to the South, since the Union supply lines for Sherman's March to the Sea ran through their territory at Cumberland gap and supplied many a Melungeon with guns and food and even horses.
43
The vast majority of Melungeons will adamantly deny that they are Melungeon. They assert that they are simply white mountain people with a little Cherokee in them. However, their white neighbors know who they are. While their speech retained archaic forms longer than that of neighboring whites, today they are culturally indistinguishable from their white neighbors, except that they live on the poorest, least productive land with the poverty this implies. Melungeon graves sometimes have small wooden houses built over them (which has reminded some observers of a similar trait among Eskimo members of the Russian Orthodox church), but this is no longer done and no explanation has been given for the practice. Some Melungeons are easy to pick out, others are simply white in appearance. The group on High Knob in Virginia have had less white introduced in this century and show much more African ancestry than those in Tennessee. The Melungeon appearance is typically olive to white complexion (many men simply look dirty), gray or green eyes with a cloudy appearance to the iris, and brown or black wavy hair. They tend to be average height to tall, with small hands and feet, and perhaps heavier than other Appalachian Mountain people.
44
The small hands and feet are a point of special pride, connecting them to putative Indian ancestors and distancing them from blacks.
If you have a bump on the back of your head near your neck, thats a usual indication of melungeon ancestry.Another is if you have a ridge on the back of your 4 top front teeth.I have one on one of my teeth but that can be attributed to the native american in my ancestry.From what Ive also read they tend to be a self hating people.
Well, that's the first interesting thing you've submitted in a long time. I have both of those things, but very little American heritage so obviously that applies to other peoples as well.
__________________
Quote:
Originally Posted by rbk2003
she was a cool chick ...i didnt even post our entire convo
-rbk2003 wonders aloud why his chances with "Vanessa" have been compromised
Originally posted by Antipathy Well, that's the first interesting thing you've submitted in a long time. I have both of those things, but very little American heritage so obviously that applies to other peoples as well.
The Melungeon descendants have some rather unique physiological characteristics. There is a bump on the back of the head of some descendants, that is located at mid-line, just above the juncture with the neck. It is about the size of half a golf ball or smaller. If you cannot find the bump, check to see if you like some descendants, including myself, have a ridge, located at the base of the head where it joins the neck, rather than the Anatolian bump. My ridge is quite noticeable. It is larger than anyone else's that I have felt. I can lay one finger under it and the ridge is as deep as my finger is thick. Other ridges are smaller. To find a ridge, place your hand at the base of your neck where it joins your shoulders, and on the center line of your spine. Run your fingers straight up your neck toward your head. If you have a ridge, it will stop your fingers from going on up and across your head.
There is also a ridge on the back of the first four teeth (upper and lower) of some descendants. If you place your fingernail at the gum line and gently draw (up or down) you can feel it and it makes a slight clicking sound. The back of the teeth also curve outward rather than straight as the descendants of anglo-saxon parentage do. Teeth like these are called Asian Shovel Teeth.
Some descendants have what is called an Asian eyefold. This is rather difficult to describe. At the inner corner of the eye, the upper lid attaches slightly lower than the lower lid. That is to say that it overlaps the bottom lid. If you place your finger just under the inner corner of the eye and gently pull down, a wrinkle will form which makes the fold more visible. Some people call these eyes, "sleepy eyes, dreamy eyes, bedroom eyes."
KINGSPORT, Tennessee -- A small population from Appalachia may be linked to an ancient tribe in India, according to a long-awaited DNA study.
Kevin Jones, a biologist at the University of Virginia College at Wise, announced the findings Thursday at the Fourth Union of the Melungeons in Kingsport, Tennessee, after two years of work.
Gathered under a tent at a public park, about 150 Melungeons had come from around the country (a show of hands indicated that about 70 percent came from states other than Tennessee) to hear results they hoped would tell them something about their heritage.
Those who were looking for black-and-white answers didn't get them. Jones' rather vague results showed that about 5 percent of the DNA indicated African descent, 5 percent was Native American, and the rest was "Euroasian," a group defined by clumping together Europe, the Middle East and India.
The most surprising finding was evidence of a rare DNA sequence common to a Northern Indian tribe called the Siddis.
The Siddis are descendants of African slaves, sailors and merchants who ended up in India as a result of trade with East Africa, starting in the 12th century and lasting into the 19th. Some of the people were stolen from their homelands and taken as slaves.
They became part of the Indian population known as the "untouchables," and are still marginalized in northwest India.
Brent Kennedy, author of The Melungeons: The Resurrection of a Proud People: An Untold Story of Ethnic Cleansing in America, had previously discovered his genes contained this sequence through a private DNA analysis company.
"I'm amazed and pleased to see that duplicated here," he said.
The study has not been through the peer-review process but Jones hopes to publish by the end of the year.
The Melungeons have suffered discrimination throughout history because their neighbors perceived them to be darker-skinned, and somehow less entitled to good land and to money.
Jones never intended to jump into the middle of a debate on racial and ethnic identity, but, alas, the Melungeons gave him no choice.
"I am not a Melungeon," Jones said, in a posh British accent rarely heard in Tennessee.
"Some of the antipathy I've run into is because they remember how bad it was to be labeled a Melungeon," Jones said. "They don't want some twit like me coming along and saying: 'You look sort of Melungeon to me.'"
The Melungeons involved in the study have been impatient for their results, and still have not gotten the individual DNA analyses they're eager for. They should see them within a few weeks, Jones said.
Several audience members wanted more specific breakdowns of ethnicities, but Jones said the study was not large enough (120 women and 30 men) to narrow it any further.
"Studying DNA hits a personal chord," Jones said. "I think in the case of the Melungeons, the complexity of the phenomenon drives that on because whether you regard yourself as a Melungeon or not might depend on whether you managed to escape the things that were associated with that."
Jones began the study to gain insight into diseases that seem to occur more frequently in the Melungeons than in other populations, such as Familial Mediterranean Fever, sarcoidosis and thalessemia.
"I didn't really care where you came from. Sorry," Jones joked.
Most of the Melungeons in the audience on Thursday did not look like people who would need to escape discrimination. Some had an olive skin tone, but the majority had fair complexions and looked quite Caucasian.
"That's part of the beauty of the story," Kennedy said. "All of these people are suddenly coming forward."
After a history of doing what they could to "pass" for white, Melungeons are now doing just the opposite and staking claim to the identity. The lighter complexions are at least in part due to Melungeons mixing with fairer-skinned people.
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Anyone heard of the Melungeon peoples?
