ALTERNATE ORIGINS

Inez is certain, however, that John and Sarah were listed in the missing book. We proposed to Dr. Shumway that the Ffuggates History class. You don’t remember the details, because you almost immediately dropped back to sleep; but something stuck with may have gone to Maryland or died in an epidemic and are buried under the New Haven Green. The good doctor shot down both you – enough to construct a family lineage leading back to whateveritwasthathappenedinhistoryclass.

ideas, saying the distance was too great, and there were no epidemics; HOWEVER my readings in history have turned up lots of No one knows what happened to Raleigh’s colonists in Roanoake, or to Virginia Dare, the celebrated First English Baby ways their presence could have been possible – and each is an example of how “accepted wisdom” is not necessarily always a To Be Born In The New World, but there are many interesting stories which still circulate in the Appalachians. Some of the Old rule to follow in tracing or chasing ancestors.

Folks, when questioned will say: “Yep. They found their way bakc here. That’s what I heard tell when I was a boy…from someone First, the New Haven Colony was funded in part by Huguenot merchants living in London, and it would be easy to under-or other.”

stand why they might have sent a representative along. Second, travel by water between the colonies (including New England Because “Fugate” is a Latin based name and not Germanic or the English that developed out of Anglo-Saxon, some have

to Virginia) was not a problem – it happened all the time. The Pilgrims were heading for Virginia! when…something happened.

speculated that the Fugates were runaways from Spanish or Portuguese ships that may have put into Atlantic harbors. (Fugate!

Water was the way to go, and obviously, there were only a handful of colonies – all on the coast – and each one had a port. Third means “Flee!” in Spanish). In fact Portuguese slaves were liberated by Sir Francis Drake from a Spanish in Panama and humanely there were epidemics in New England – smallpox, for example, in Boston. Read Cotton Mather. Fourth, there are a lot of dead or inhumanely dumped by him on the shores of the Carolinas in the 1500s – so that he could make room for some English men people under The New Haven Green– the City simply moved their headstones in the early 1800s when they decided it would be or some timber, or something more valuable than Portuguese, I think. Even this idea is possible, although there is absolutely no unpleasant to picnic among the corpse markers. In fact, part of one of the original cemeteries is underneath the First Church On evidence for it.

The Green, and it makes an interesting visit - if you have the stomach for it after your picnic.

There are a few people in the mountains who trace their ancestry back to Pocahontas – which American dolts who don’t

know much about history, tend to associate with the Lost Colony of Roanoake, though it has no connection whatsoever. You can

Note: New Haven Colony was a Merchant Colony out of London. The Huguenots were sailors and ship owners out of London.

see how this happens:

They participated heavily in what was first known as Quinnipiack. The Fugates were members of the First Huguenot Church in

“There is a Roanoake, Virginia; there is a Lost Colony of Roanoake in North Carolina which Pocohontas had something

Spittalfields, London, where drapers, weavers, merchants, and ships’ people also settled among the Puritans (I’ll note, however, to do with. Carolina is next to Virginia and the capital of Virginia is Roanoke [which, by the way, is not the location of the Lost that Peter Fookett was described as a “vintner.” It’s logical there could be some connection there. Add to this the “mystery” that Colony]. And Granny’s people came from near Roanoke. We don’t know where the Lost Colony went, because they got lost. We John and Sarah aren’t mentioned in the church record books also 1640 – and the next time a Fugate appears in a record, it is in also don’t know who your kinfolk were before Granny’s grandmother. But I’ll bet you it could have been tell Pocahontas! I woke Virginia. Admittedly, there are a “lost” 20 years.

up one day in the middle of History class when the teacher was talking about her.”

Augustus Fouquet, Nieuw Amsterdam, 1652

There is a notation on an immigrant ship’s list of passengers, and not much more. Given the Dutch and English propensity for offering havens to Huguenots, it is not surprising that a French Huguenot would have fled to Germany and then taken a Dutch ship to Nieuw Amsterdam and tried to make a go of it there. Dutch New York was populated by people from 90 countries – a lot of them Walloons - and was hardly Dutch at all. What it was – and is – was and is a place for just about anybody from any planet in the Solar System to go there to seek your fortune.

Augustus was a fine old name, but God knows what happened to him.

Melungeons

In Inez’s tree one of the most puzzling references is to a group of “indigenous” mountain people who call themselves “Melungeons.”

Inez’s grandmother on her father’s side was Julia Collins(worth) Fugate, the illegitimate daughter of a married man named French Combs, who was descended from the first settlers in Jamestown, VA. Of the Collins’, little is known, except they changed their name from Collinsworth.

Collins and Collinworth are two of the most common names among a group who call themselves “Melungeons.” They claim

to be indigenous to the mountains. Melungeon researchers point to the diaries of Dr. Thomas Walker (1715-1794) a physician and explorer and the first Englishman to explore the mountains of southeastern Kentucky and northeastern Tennessee in 1750. Walker took a lot of “firsts” American history: the first European to build a non-Indian house in the mountains; the first European who named the Cumberland Gap, the first European to discover coal in Kentucky.

He also kept a diary, in which he is purported to have made first mention of the Melungeons.

Lost Colony, Portuguese Castaways, Etc. Etc.

These theories of Hillbilly origin have been floated by lots of self proclaimed experts – including myself - and indicate the perils of hooking your short list of relatives to historical events you first heard mentioned when you woke up unexpectedly during 501

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WEIRD HOOKUPS AND A GREAT MYSTERY