Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, November 19, 1995 TAG: 9511200006
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-13 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WISE LENGTH: Medium
Brent Kennedy, a Melungeon and chancellor of Clinch Valley College, has emerged as a leading scholar and foremost spokesman on the subject. Author of ``The Melungeons - The Resurrection of a Proud People,'' Kennedy has assembled a 30-member Melungeon Research Committee.
The Melungeons are a mysterious culture whose members have inhabited a few remote settlements in extreme upper east Tennessee, Southwest Virginia and southeastern Kentucky since before local history was kept. They are now scattered across the nation.
They typically have dark complexions, may have dark eyes or blue eyes and often are believed to be of American Indian descent.
In addition to the television crews, two of Turkey's most prestigious universities are studying the genetic and historic paths of the Melungeons.
Life in the early days was sometimes difficult for Melungeons, many of whom suffered the same indignities as blacks, with whom they were frequently believed to share a bloodline. Yet there was something distinctly Mediterranean or Middle Eastern about the Melungeons that prompted researchers to pry deeper into their past.
Kennedy owes his quest primarily to a strange disease - erythema nodosum sarcoidosis - that nearly killed him several years ago. Symptoms mimic those of arthritis, lupus, glaucoma, Hodgkin's disease and others.
When his illness finally went into remission, he began life anew with a greater appreciation of his family, heritage and time. He learned that sarcoidosis was common among Portuguese immigrants and Mediterranean peoples. It also was more common in the southeastern United States among both blacks and Caucasians of seemingly unrelated backgrounds.
He needed to know how his own Melungeon traits contributed to his illness. Who were these Melungeons, who were part of his life but about whom he knew so little?
``Melungeons look different, even within the same family,'' he said. ``Up on Stone Mountain, there's one little boy who looks like he's stepped right out of Istanbul, and his brother who is two years younger looks like he stepped off the boat from Northern Ireland. In one family you'll see someone who looks Irish, another sibling that looks absolutely Native American, and another that looks Arab, or maybe Turkish, like me. You'd better believe it's caused some problems in some families.''
As Kennedy traced his unknown forebears, he found that some had variously claimed to be Portuguese, Indian, Turkish or Moorish. Then he noticed old family names, such as Mullins, Collins and Nash, that were common in Melungeon lore. A few pieces of the puzzle fell into place.
For the past five years, Kennedy's research team has traced Melungeons from the dark-skinned, brown- and blue-eyed, European-featured people that English and French explorers met in the southern Appalachians in the 1650s, to the people who claimed to be ``Portyghee'' and whom the Scotch-Irish settlers found tilling the land when they arrived in the Appalachians late in the next century.
The best historic and scientific evidence indicates that the Spanish colony of Santa Elena was overrun by the English in 1586 at the site of what now is Beaufort, S.C., Kennedy says. A band of perhaps 200 survivors fled north and was taken in by the Cherokees near Asheville, N.C.
That same year, Sir Francis Drake conquered Cartagena in the southern Caribbean and freed a few hundred Muslim Turks who had been enslaved by the Spanish. A storm forced Drake's fleet toward the North Carolina coast, where he left most of the Turks at Roanoke Island. They soon reached the mainland, mingled with Indians and others who lived along the coast and eventually moved westward.
``So when they claimed to be Portuguese, Turkish, Moorish, Indian and Melungeon, they were telling the truth,'' said Kennedy, who found that the word Melungeon is Turkish, meaning ``abandoned by God.''
When he visited the Anatolian region of Turkey searching for clues to the lost culture, ``they thought I was a Turk,'' he said, ``and I'd look at them and think they could have been from Whitesburg or Virgie, Ky. They ate grits, tomato gravy - things that I've eaten in the mountains all my life. The Turkish word `gaumy,' which means all messed up, I've heard all my life as `gaumed up.'
``Probably millions of Americans descended from large numbers of these people who have disappeared into history,'' Kennedy said. ``The evidence is pretty darn strong that Abraham Lincoln's mother, Nancy Hanks, was Melungeon. Elvis Presley's family on his mother's side exited North Carolina at the same time all the other Melungeons did, and headed out West. It's a really broad-based ethnic heritage that's sort of been lost in the shuffle of this country's growing.''
by CNB