LOVE AND MARRIAGE

Unfortunately, birth certificates were not a universal requirement in the bygone days, and even when they were filed, they Still, when you look at the family tree you’ve pieced together and look as hard as you can for a Melungeon or ancient often did not require ethnic or racial identity – as they did during the “Jim Crow” days after the Civil War; so, while many of our Levite – it’s hard to see any room for them.

ancestors gave birth to bi-racial children, their identity as part Cherokee or Shawnee or Cree was sometimes only recorded only in The origin of the mountain people is interesting enough …

family oral culture. This left many of their descendants unable to prove the kind of Indian ancestry which would make the quali-fied to receive their fair share of their slot machine profits from the Smokey Mountain Casino (however, using this genealogy, our kids might be able to claim some of the rakeoffs).

The pioneers also incorporated other ethnic groups into their basically English ancestry. Like a snowball rolling down a hill, diversity seems to increase as the pioneers moved down The Great Wagon Road from Northern Virginia (understanding that some of these families started with Pocahontas).

Descendants of European nationalities which had hated each other for centuries “over there” were thrown into new and challenging situations over here in which memories of their historical pasts became irrelevant, and they eventually amalgamated into a new and relatively homogeneous ethnic group that might simply be called “Pioneer Stock.”

In this epoch of meeting and matching, there does not seem to have been much made of any ethnic clashes. Descendants of Mennonites married Huguenots, and they married descendants of Scots and Irish and Indians. Similarly, while religious practice

– such as it was – was predominantly Protestant, Presbyterian married Anglican, and their descendants married the offspring of one-time Catholics seemingly without reservation, until eventually, they were all related.

Of course we can never know this with certainty; but there is also no evidence that ethnic identity even prevented a man and a woman from jumping over the broom, or at least taking up residence with each other. Some of the easy integration was helped along by the requirements of life on the frontier. Settlers had to pull together for defense, for building residences, and for dealing with their other common problems. Any remembered conflict from the Old Country had to be put aside in the face of more immediate issues.

Another marriage trend that these records suggest, is that, soon after the settlers got to Southwestern Virginia, they were already marrying within established family “clans.” Noble marrying Noble is not uncommon; Campbell marrying Noble – different Campbells and Nobles for sure, but still closely related to the original members, happens often in every other generation. Of course, by this time, a Campbell wasn’t really a Scot, a Fugate was no longer French, a Neace not identifiably German, and the Cherokee or Shawnee or Cree of origin, now was simply referred to as “Indian.” The genetic deck of Old Cavaliers had long been shuffled – and each one had more than two Jokers in it.

There were also pockets of settlers who were tri-racial. In every community there were families with “nappy hair” who may or may not have been descendants of runaway slaves, or slaves that had been freed by their masters, or “free blacks” from the coastal regions who resented continuing racism; or, in the case of the Melungeons (See Alternative Origins), families whose black ancestors had intermarried with Indians who then intermarried with whites.

I identified Grandma Julie as one of these people – a Melungeon - but was mistaken.

It’s been theorized that because being classified as other than 100% Caucasian was something to be avoided, more exotic origins may have been invented by families with these backgrounds. Perhaps succeeding generations began to believe that stories that there had been “indigenous” Mediterranean groups existing in the mountains long before the Europeans got there. Maybe they were Portuguese; maybe they were descendants of the Spanish explorers; maybe they were a mixture of the Englishmen from the Lost Colony of Roanoke with the Indians who took them in– perhaps they were even descendants of the ancient Hebrews.

As would be expected, strange relics were sooner or later found to back up these myths of origin: Indian mounds were mis-interpreted, mysterious writings were discovered on rocks that were thrown up by the ploughs, and “experts” from the North descended – “experts” in Egyptian hieroglyphics, the early Phoenician alphabet, Ogam, and Celt-Iberian scratchings. It was all good entertainment at the time, and to some it became their “proud heritage” which they demanded to be included in the history books.

One of the most prominent of the groups which were “discovered” hiding in plain sight is the Melungeons – who I was certain were the progenitors of Granny’s people. There are books, websites, and documentaries devoted to them. They claim to be a “tri-racial isolate,” descended from Portuguese castaways, local Indians, and pioneering white settlers. They carry certain surnames –

among which is Collins, my daughters’ great-great grandmother’s name - and they claim to suffer from various medical disorders that can be traced to the Mediterranean (See Alternative Origins).

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