“DNA STUDY DELIVERS SOME ANGST – Report Raises Race Issues About Exotic Appalachian Residents – (AP – Nashville, Tenn.) – For years, varied and sometimes wild claims have been made about the origins of a group of dark-skinned Appalachian residents once known derisively as the Melungeons. Some speculated that they were descended from Portuguese explorers, or perhaps from Turkish slaves, or Gypsies? Now, a new DNA Study in the journal of genetic genealogy attempts to separate truth from oral tradition and wishful thinking. The study found the truth to be somewhat less exotic: Genetic evidence shows that the family’s historically called ‘Melungeons’ are the offspring of sub-Saharan African men and white women of Northern or Central European origin. And that report, published in April in the peer-reviewed journal, doesn’t sit comfortably with some people who claim Melungeon ancestry. “There were a whole lot of people upset by this study,” lead researcher Ms. Roberta Estes said. “They just knew they were Portuguese or Native American.”
Beginning in the early 1800s, or possibly before, the term Melungeon was applied as a slur to a group of about 40 families along the Tennessee-Virginia border. But it has since become a catch-all phrase for a number of groups of mysterious mixed-race ancestry. In recent decades, interest in the origin of the Melungeons has risen dramatically with advances both in DNA research and in the advent of internet resources that allow individuals to trace their ancestry without digging through dusty archives.
Mr. G. Reginald Daniel, a Sociologist at the University of California Santa Barbara, who has spent more than 30 years examining multiracial people in the United States and wasn’t part of this research, said the study is more evidence that race mixing in the country isn’t a new phenomenon. “All of us are multiracial,” he said. “It is recapturing a more authentic U.S. history.”
Ms. Estes and her fellow researchers theorize the various Melungeon lines may have sprung from the unions of black and white indentured servants living in Virginia in the mid-1600s, before slavery. They conclude that as the laws were passed to penalize the mixing of races, the various family groups could only intermarry with each other, even migrating from Virginia, through the Carolinas, before settling primarily in the East Tennessee Mountains. Claims of Portuguese ancestry likely were a ruse they used in order to remain free and retain other privileges that came with being considered white, according to the study’s authors.
Mr. Jack Goins, who has researched Melungeon history for about 40 years and who was a driving force behind the DNA study, said his distant relatives were listed as ‘Portuguese’ on an 1880 U.S. Census. He was taken aback when he first had his DNA tested around the year 2000. Swabs taken from his cheeks collected the genetic material from saliva or skin cells, and the sample was sent to a laboratory for identification. “It surprised me so much when mine came up African that I had it done again,” he said. “I had to have a second opinion. But it came back the same way. I had three done. They were all the same.” The DNA study is ongoing as researchers continue to locate Melungeon additional descendants.”
(*Source: UNION-TRIBUNE newspaper – Friday, May 25, 2012 – Pg. 5 w/Pic)