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Please see message numbers: 25611, 25690 (written by Kevin Mullins') and 25716.
Yesterday Kevin Mullins responded to a post from me. I forwarded his and mine to Tim Hashaw, who sent back the following response [which he told me I coul share with this group]. Curtis
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Tim Hashaw's response to Kevin's ---->
Let me make TWO POINTS.
FIRST POINT
Don't assume that the name Melungeon began at Stoney Creek in 1813.
Why? Who were the mysterious urbanite "Mulungeons of Richmond" who lived during the same time and of the same generation as the rural western Virginia/eastern Tennessee Virginians? Read these two sources:
----"The platform of Feb 1856 which expunged and ignored the 12th section and in a letter which goes expressly for restoring the Missouri Compromise. The Mulungeons of Richmond endorsed the 'late convention' at Philadelphia too; but will any southern man-- a Stuart or an Imobdin even -- endorse this letter for the restoration of the Missouri Compromise.''
http://books.google.com/books?id=gaaMrUa6w-EC&q=american+history+pamphlets+mulengeons&dq=american+history+pamphlets+mulengeons&pgis=1
and:
"From the Richmond Whig. Letter from Hon. John M. Botts
Date: March 26, 1859
Location: Maryland
Paper: Easton Gazette
Article type: Letters
......when the Sheriff came to count up the votes at the close of the polls, they counted but five -- and if I had received the vote of one ''Molungeon,'' and he had been authorized by the Constitution to vote, and had 'had' a majority of only one--- it would have been difficult to tell, whether I was most indebted for my election to the "Molungeon" or to the Chief Justice of the U.S.; and if my competitor had received six "Molungeon" votes, or the votes of six worthless and degraded locofocos (supposing they could be any such) they would have more than balanced these five of the first men of the State could boast..........."
(END QUOTES)
We are misled by assumptions: Newman Ridge-centric assumptions. There were at least, at least, two groups of Melungeons living at the same time: urban Melungeons of Richmond, and rural Melungeons of Eastern Tennessee. And probably many more groups known as Melungeons in other places east of Hancock County - all at the same time. More light will be shed as more documents are located. So, in trying to solve the riddle of the "name" Melungeons, don't over speculate on the role of Wise County and Hancock County in the origin of the name. That role was likely nil. The claim of a 200 year silence in between the 1619 White Lion and 1813 Stoney Creek is disingenuous. The people (just those that we know of) described as Melungeons were born in the mid 1700s. We also need to identify the "Melungeons of Richmond" and trace where their families originated. Document first, think second. There's a whole lot of paper out there that hasn't been found.
SECOND POINT:
Among the thousands captured in the 1619 war and later wars, were Angolans and Kongolans of the christianized kingdoms. They were childen and grandchildren of Christians in Africa. They had known Europeans since the 1490s. When they were put on ships, they called themselves by a name that meant "exile" - melongo: "comrades from the same homeland who left on the same ship." In the Americas, the meaning would have been, "foreigners - people from another land." The word doesn't have a racial meaning. It means "exiles", or "strangers." In ancient Hebrew, the same people would be described as "gur" or "ger": "foreigner."
How did the Hebrew patriarch Abraham identify himself ethnically? He didn't. He called himself "a stranger in a strange land." That is, he called himself a "gur." Gur meant "foreigner." Not "our" kind.
Gur is literally what Melungeons from the Cumberland Gap were called in 1810 in Arkansas: "the foreigners." Indians repeatedly called themselves "the human beings" while callling alien tribes "foreigners" in their own language. Most of the Indian tribal names we know today literally mean, in some Indian tongue, "the human beings", or "those foreigners."
Going back to prehistoric times all over the world, it is the most common, most established way of identifying your group contrasted with another group be it on an ethnic, cultural, or geographically perceived difference. The word "stranger" may be "gur" or "goi" (foreigner) in whatever tongue. For the Angolans who came to America it was melongo - strangers, foreigners coming from another place. Nothing to do with race. They became "them fur'ners." Melungeons. This idea covers "mysterious," "odd", "foreign-born," "strange" and the repeated question marks about place and ethnicity of origin that dogged the mixed descendants of the Angolans.
In a sense, "mysterious Melungeons" is repetitious. It's like saying, "strange strangers."
I got to get back to work now.
Two points. (At least) two different groups of Melungeons lived miles aparts in the same generation: Newman's Ridge and Richmond, before the Civil War. And, there's a reason the idea of "mysterious" has dogged the Melungeons: they were "exiles - alien foreigners" who didn't seem to fit in. People in Angola didn't use the word "melongo" to describe people in Angola. It was a word used only in reference to the Atlantic crossing to describe people in passage between lands. Exiles, estranged people, strangers in a strange land.
Tim Hashaw
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