The Mystery of The Melungeons
Over the past two years, increased societal discussion regarding race has given rise to the discovery, of many Americans, of a mixed racial background. When my family decided to test our DNA, fully confident that the results would be no surprise, our known family history was flipped upside down. What we thought we knew was certainly not the truth.
I can remember my grandmother telling me, from an early age, that our family was descended from the Iroquois of northern New York. This is what I had always been told, and I never doubted it—I even relayed this fact proudly. My grandmother and all of her four sisters have dark olive skin and dark hair, whereas my pale skin turns crispy after five minutes in the sun. Native American heritage was the perfect explanation for their darker features, something that I did not inherit. I knew no further details than that, which, in retrospect, was slightly strange for a family that has hundreds of books of recorded family history. When I pressed my mother for more details, she explained that she knew nothing beyond that fact that we were Iroquois. That’s what my grandmother told her, and what my great grandmother told my grandmother.
When our much anticipated DNA results were returned to us, there was no sign of any Native American ancestry, but instead, West African ancestry from Cameroon as well as Congo. This was a shock. Where did the Native American story originate, and why? We were able to trace our ancestors with African DNA back to the Appalachian region of eastern Tennessee. People of mixed race that lived, and even still live in this isolated, mountainous region of the US are referred to as Melungeon. It is a little studied, and little known group of people who, according to writer and historian Darlene Nixon, “originated through the very beginnings of colonization in America.” Many Melungeon people are tri-racial, with European, African and Native American ancestry, but some, like my family are just bi-racial. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, many of these people faced discrimination, but for some, like my 4th great-grandfather, Levi S Goen, his more racially ambiguous features allowed him to change his race on census records throughout the course of his life, according to the political climate of the era.
Being that so little was known, until recently, about this group of people living isolated lives in the mountains, myths and theories regarding the origin of these people had developed over the course of hundreds of years. A USA Today article from 2015 highlights the story of DruAnna Williams Overbay’s discovery of her Melungeon ancestry in the year 1947. The story, in her family, was that they were Portugeuse. This was a reasonable explanation for their darker toned skin, and one that did not draw the same racial discrimination of having African ancestry. According to this article, “Melungeon’s were whispered to be descendants of shipwrecked Portuguese sailors, or gypsies now known as Roma. Some have speculated on connections with the Lumber Indians in Robeson County or the Lost Colonists of the Outer Banks.”
Over time, their descendants moved throughout the US and many Americans, to this day, are unaware of their Melungeon heritage. Many families, like my own, have orally told stories that were passed down through generations, that we just recently discovered were untrue. However, the story of our Native American ancestry did not come from nowhere. Our ancestors did live in a predominantly Native American region, so it is entirely possible that the Goen family genuinely believed that they were Native American. Levi S Goen’s census records tell an interesting story. His race, for the first thirty years of his life is recorded as mulatto. In 1870, a census record indicates that he changed his race to Native American. However, in 1900, his race is recorded as white. The racial ambiguity of the Melungeon people has resulted in a fascinating trend of American families with falsified versions of their family history.