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Top: Society: Ethnicity: The_Americas: Melungeon
Melungeons are a group of mixed race people who have lived in Appalachia for at least 200 years and probably longer. They are thought to be a mix of Native American, African, Mediterranean and North European. There are Melungeons and their descendants all over the region, eastern Tennessee, western Virginia, eastern Kentucky and northern North Carolina. There are at least three groups that the name has been applied to, the first use of the name was for the Newman's Ridge group centered on Hancock and Hawkins Counties, TN, and Scott and Wise Counties, VA, then the Graysville Melungeons, between Knoxville and Chattanooga, and then the Kentucky Melungeons, in southeastern Kentucky. The term has also been used for the Redbones or Louisiana Melungeons, along the Texas-Louisiana border, and the Dead Lake People or Florida Melungeons in the Florida Panhandle. There is a lot of research, speculation and discussion on the origin of the Melungeons.
Melungeon was a derogatory term not used by the Melungeons themselves until very recently. Other terms used for them include "Black Dutch", "Black Irish", "Ramps", and "Goins". Goins is the most common surname in the group (also spelt Goens, Goings, Goines, Going, Goin, etc.).
Mestee (old mixed race) groups in South Carolina, such as the Brass Ankles, Red Bones, Turks, and Smilings. Description, history, sociology, status and connections with other groups. Connected with each other and with the Melungeons and Lumbees by movement and intermarriage. Can be considered to be Melungeons of South Carolina, since Melungeon can be used for any group of people derived from old mixing of White, Black and Native American, especially if the mix includes some Mediterranean input. All these groups fit this description.
Information on the Ramapo Mountain People (Ramapough Mountain Indians)[Jackson Whites]. These Mestee people claim to be the descendants of the Munsee division of the Lenape (Algonquians who were indigenous to the area before white arrival), but this is a very recent claim. Previously, they claimed to be Tuscarora (southern Iroquoians who passed by west of the Ramapo Mountains on their way to Canada). Studies indicate they are a Black-Dutch mixture from the Dutch settlements in the Hudson valley.
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