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Searching for the truth - Mystery of the Melungeons takes a very interesting turn
Citizen Tribune (Morristown, TN) ^ | 02/11/2005 | Kim Lobrillo

Posted on 02/12/2005 9:52:39 AM PST by Engraved-on-His-hands

For more than 200 hundred years the mysterious origins of the Melungeons has mystified many who were searching for facts. Recent research compiled by the Melungeon Research Committee (MRS) reveals the most probable theory thus far.

(Excerpt) Read more at zwire.com ...


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: archaeology; ggg; godsgravesglyphs; history; melungeons
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To: ValerieUSA

Mulignon – (Southern Italian dialect) – a black person, sometimes used in the same context as ..., kinda close, my step father blames the eggplant corruption on the Turks in Southern Italy, I am a Yankee we would have corrupted worst than that.


21 posted on 02/12/2005 1:51:52 PM PST by Little Bill (A 37%'r, a Red Spot on a Blue State)
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To: ValerieUSA
Updates on MRC research reveal DNA and genetic research that links at least some of the current Melungeon population to the Mediterranean and Middle East through diseases they have acquired which are specific to those areas.

I'm sure more information will be available in the future with more DNA testing. This is very interesting.

22 posted on 02/12/2005 2:02:00 PM PST by rdl6989
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To: bert; All
The physical anamolies are quite interesting, as well: the "shovel" teeth; prominent bone in the side of the feet; indentation at the base of the skill, among other traits. There is some controversy about these traits, but most are generally accepted, I think.
23 posted on 02/12/2005 3:28:30 PM PST by varina davis
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To: Melungeoness

Welcome to Free Republic. I'm not sure but what I may be part Melungeon. My ancestors were all around East Tenn. and my grandfather was half Creek Indian. I don't know what the rest of him was, LOL.


24 posted on 02/12/2005 5:27:57 PM PST by WVNan
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To: Capriole; Engraved-on-His-hands
After some searching I discovered that a genetic survey was done on Melungeons of eastern Tennessee and southwestern Virginia. Blood samples were collected from 177 people in 1969 and compared to existing data from 200 populations worldwide.

The conclusions verified the Mediterranean origins of the Melugeons. Specific regions mentioned as having populations with genetic markers consistent with the Melungeons included: Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Iraq, Turkey, Cyprus, Malta, Canary Islands, extreme southern Italy, the Galician mountain region of Spain and Portugal, and certain South American Indians.

Abstract: Tennessee Anthropologist, published by the Tennessee Anthropological Association MELUNGEONS: COMPARISON OF GENE FREQUENCY DISTRIBUTIONS TO THOSE OF WORLDWIDE POPULATIONS. James L. Guthrie. XV(1):13-22. 1990.
"Worldwide gene frequency distributions in five major blood group systems were searched for similarity to those of the Melungeons. Calculations of the Mean Measure of Divergence (MMD) identified populations from the Mediterranean region and from coastal Europe that do not differ significantly from the Melungeons. All others, including Amerindians, differ widely. Hybridization with Indians or with Blacks is not required for the data to fit Mediterranean populations. However, if it is assumed that the Melungeons are basically English, a considerable black component is required. These results are consistent with the Melungeon tradition that they are Portuguese, and are in substantial agreement with the findings of Pollitzer and Brown, whose 1969 data provided the basis for the present calculations."

This statement from Brent Kennedy's The Melungeons: The Resurrection of a Proud People; An Untold Story of Ethnic Cleansing in America sums up the genetic data:

"I contend that the remnants of Joao (“Juan”) Pardo’s forts, joined by Portuguese refugees from Santa Elena, and possibly a few stray Dominicans and Jesuits, exiled Moorish French Huguenots, and escaped Acadians, along with [Sir Francis] Drake’s and perhaps other freed Turkish, Moorish, and Iberian captives, survived on these shores, combined forces over the ensuing years, moved to the hinterlands, intermarried with various Carolina and Virginia Native Americans, and eventually became the reclusive Melungeons."

25 posted on 02/12/2005 6:03:23 PM PST by concentric circles
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To: Engraved-on-His-hands

Great post.


26 posted on 02/12/2005 6:12:05 PM PST by Just mythoughts
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To: Just mythoughts

bump


27 posted on 02/12/2005 9:05:46 PM PST by vannrox (The Preamble to the Bill of Rights - without it, our Bill of Rights is meaningless!)
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To: Engraved-on-His-hands
Recent research compiled by the Melungeon Research Committee (MRS)

Not an auspicious beginning, acronymically speaking ...

28 posted on 02/12/2005 9:44:49 PM PST by fnord (I used to date a contortionist, until one night she broke it off ...)
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To: rudyudy

"The homes had windows and oval shaped doors."

Hobbits?


29 posted on 02/12/2005 10:01:01 PM PST by dljordan
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To: alloysteel

I remember reading about them in the Tennessee Blue Book in school. Of course that was in the 50's when we actually studied history.


30 posted on 02/12/2005 10:02:52 PM PST by dljordan
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To: Melungeoness

I'm a grumpy old Tennessee curmudgeon but I appreciate the sentiment.


31 posted on 02/12/2005 10:04:51 PM PST by dljordan
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To: dljordan

BTTT


32 posted on 02/13/2005 2:36:10 AM PST by snowtigger (It ain't what you shoot, it's what you hit...)
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To: Engraved-on-His-hands
The MRC believes these settlers came to the coast of South Carolina in 1567 under the leadership of a Spanish captain, Juan Pardo. The settlers consisted of approximately 250 soldiers, their wives and children.

That would explain how the early The French found them in 1690 in the western Carolina mountains.

(Kennedy's theory challenged the most commonly accepted theory of Melungeon origin: that they were Appalachian "tri-racial isolates," a mixture of "poor" whites, African slaves and "renegade" Native Americans -- the definition, in fact, attached to Melungeon in Webster's Third New International Dictionary as recently as 15 years ago.)

It was true of the Seminole, it would be easy to make the assumption with the Melungeon.
33 posted on 02/13/2005 2:54:09 AM PST by R. Scott (Humanity i love you because when you're hard up you pawn your Intelligence to buy a drink.)
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To: R. Scott

Just curious why they don't accept what was reported back in the 1600's. They said they were "Portuguee". That would seem to me to be more reliable than someone's theory in 1993.


34 posted on 02/13/2005 11:13:15 AM PST by rudyudy
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To: rudyudy

Because the report came from the French?


35 posted on 02/13/2005 12:02:26 PM PST by R. Scott (Humanity i love you because when you're hard up you pawn your Intelligence to buy a drink.)
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To: rudyudy
Could it be?

...Deu 30:3 The Lord thy God will bring back again thy captivity, and will have mercy on thee, and gather thee again out of all the nations, into which he scattered thee before.
Deu 30:4 If thou be driven as far as the poles of heaven, the Lord thy God will fetch thee back from hence,

Deu 30:5 And will take thee to himself, and bring thee into the land which thy fathers possessed, and thou shalt possess it: and blessing thee, he will make thee more numerous than were thy fathers.
Deu 30:6 The Lord thy God will circumcise thy heart, and the heart of thy seed: that thou mayst love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul, that thou mayst live.

Deu 30:9 And the Lord thy God will make thee abound in all the works of thy hands,....thy land, and in the plenty of all things. For the Lord will return to rejoice over thee in all good things, as he rejoiced in thy fathers:

36 posted on 02/13/2005 12:12:50 PM PST by patriot_wes (When I see two guys kissin..argh! Is puking a hate crime yet?)
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To: R. Scott

Not the French but I do know a copy of the report is available from the state of Virginia.


37 posted on 02/13/2005 1:05:57 PM PST by rudyudy
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To: rudyudy
I was basing my comment about the French on this:

The French found them in 1690 in the western Carolina mountains, puzzling at their claim to be "Portyghee." And the Scotch-Irish settlers who moved down the Shenandoah Valley in the 1750s found them in the far reaches of southwestern Virginia and northeast Tennessee, pushing them farther into the Appalachians of northeast Tennessee and northwest North Carolina and laying claim to the fertile Melungeon valley land.

38 posted on 02/13/2005 2:09:43 PM PST by R. Scott (Humanity i love you because when you're hard up you pawn your Intelligence to buy a drink.)
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To: R. Scott

That's interesting. Thanks.


39 posted on 02/13/2005 4:25:46 PM PST by rudyudy
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To: rudyudy

I never heard of them until today – that’s one of the reasons I like FR. Learn something new every day.


40 posted on 02/13/2005 5:29:40 PM PST by R. Scott (Humanity i love you because when you're hard up you pawn your Intelligence to buy a drink.)
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