Different People: The Melungeon

These mysterious people have been studied for centuries but no one seems to know where they came from nor how they fit into any category racially. Some of their neighboring people knew they were not black or Indian, but they were not white people either so are probably are of mixed ancestry.

There are areas along the Atlantic where you can still find groups of people like the Melungeons that are thought of as "mysterious" people because no one know from where they came or where they originated from. They are referred to as "tri-racial isolates by those that are trying to study them because, they can not be placed into any specific category.

However, the original Melungeons who are also "tri-racial", lived within the Southern Appalachian Mountains around northeast Tennessee, southeast Kentucky and southwest Virginia. They are not distinguished much from their fellow Appalachian neighbors. Mountian folks that lived in the Apalachian Mountains used words not in use much beyond their mountain homes and the Melungeons also used words that were archaic.

While most of the Melungeons appeared to have straight black hair, dark complexions, were tall, straight, with prominent cheekbones, some had light hair, blue eyes and fair skin. So nothing is definitive about these people.

Since 1840 the Melungeons have been a source of fascination for magazines and newspapers. They really hate this publicity, resented exploitation by these periodicals and try to avoid it whenever possible. They even hated the name given to them of Melungeons as they felt it meant cursed soul, abandoned by God, evil, or other derogatory things and certainly never called their selves this name.

As the years went by reference to them faded through the 1960's. Many of them had integrated into other societies and married into white families. Therefore, it was thought they had disappeared and became part of their surroundings cultures. However, in the middle of the 1990's there developed a group of people on the internet that formed a virtual community of Melungeons. Some folks that think they could be related to these people even publish a Melungeon newsletter.

Although many theories and legends abound about this group of people, saying they were shipwrecked explorers, pirates and even sailors, no one know for sure where they came from.

Rumors have claimed they were Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Greek, Italian, and sub-Saharan Africans, none of which has been proven. They showed up about the time the first white families settled in the Appalachians around 1795 as some of them got land grants, which may prove that they were not shipped wrecked.