A Melungeon’s Story –
A Descendant of America’s Original Melting Pot ©
Forward
I
had never heard the word Melungeon until
after I published my first novel The
Peacemaker in 2009. I was attending my college reunion in
Louisville, Kentucky just after publishing the book and was on a cross country
tour promoting the book while stopping in Louisville to visit family and attend
the reunion. I was discussing the characters in my book with a friend and had
explained that the characters, although fictional, were based upon characters
from family stories from my own ancestry.
I told him of my belief that I was of mixed heritage and had spent most
of my adult life trying to uncover family secrets that prevented me from
understanding who I was and what my place in American society was. My friend
then asked me whether I knew about the Melungeons. I confessed I had never heard the word, but
when he told me about this group of people, I realized that I was, indeed, a
Melungeon.
The
origin of the word Melungeon is as mixed
as the group of people it represents. Some scholars say the word comes from the
French word, mélange, meaning
mixture. Other possibilities include: Afro-Portuguese melungo (shipmate), Greek melan
(black), Turkish melon (cursed
soul), Italian word for eggplant melongena
(referring to black skin), and the Old English term malengina (guile or deceit).
No matter the origin, Melungeons have historically resented the word
which they considered a racial slur. In recent years, however, as closed doors
are opened, Melungeons such as me are beginning to view the word with a sense
of pride because we are, indeed, the original melting pot of this country and
the hope to finally eradicate separation based on race.
The
Lakota word for black is Sapa. Using Saponi
as a name may have actually been the Lakota reference to the Eastern Seaboard
Blackfeet. In Lakota the word is Si-Sapa.
In the oral histories of the Dhegihan Sioux (Osage, Omaha, Ponce, Quapau,
and Kew) the Si-Sapa migrated from Ohio to Virginia chasing out the rival
nation they called the Doeg – the
Algonquin tribes of Pow Hantan or Nanticoke.
Powhantan was the father of the Indian Princess Pocahontas. These
stories say the Blackfeet lost their land to the Tuscarora in the first of the
Indian Wars of the early 17th Century and then started moving north
and west in search of land.
The
Saponi were probably the same as the tribe inhabiting the land around the
Potomac River in 1608 near the colony of Jamestown and present day
Charlottesville, Virginia mentioned by Captain John Smith in his reports to
King James. Decimated by disease and
constant warfare, the Saponi and Tutelo moved to settlements outside Ft.
Christiana in Virginia in 1711 under the protection of Virginia Governor
Spotswood. After Ft. Christiana was abandoned and the Saponi lost this
protection, the Saponi and Tutelo migrated to the western edges of Virginia and
Carolina colonies in what is today Tennessee and Kentucky. There they lived
with the Catawba Indians that inhabited the land on the Catawba River in what
eventually became Rock Hill, South Carolina. In 1753 a group of 14 men and women left the
Catawba Nation to migrate to western Pennsylvania to become part of the Cayuga tribe,
one of the six nations of the powerful Iroquois Confederacy. By the end of the 18th Century the Saponi
disappeared from history and was considered extinct. In the 20th
Century remnants of the tribe in North Carolina have tried to assert cultural
identity but none have recognition as a tribe with any rights to benefits.
Uncovering this history of the Saponi or
Blackfeet corresponds to a family story told by my father that his great
grandmother was a “full blooded Indian squaw” of the Blackfeet Nation. I have
identified this great grandmother and am sure she is the Native American
connection in the family. There are a lot of unexplained gaps in her ancestry.
Louisa Jane
Wilkerson was born in 1844 in Hart County Kentucky and died in 1931. Louisa was
listed in the 1930 census as Jannie Puckett aged 88 living with Andrew Jackson
Criswell and Annie Puckett Criswell in their home in Leitchfield, Kentucky. These
are my paternal grandparents. My father was born in 1914 so he was old enough
to remember his grandmother and her stories about her ancestry. My father was proud of this heritage along
with his Scotch Irish ancestry and continually repeated those stories around
our family dinner table when I was growing up in Louisville, Kentucky in the
fifties and sixties. .
Family
records indicate a lot of migration to northern Kentucky into the Appalachian
area of West Virginia and Eastern Kentucky by the Criswell branch (as well as
Tomes) of my family tree. The male
members of the Criswell and Puckett lines trace their ancestry back to England,
Scotland and Ireland. It is my belief that these men were of Scotch- Irish
descent and came to the New World in the second migration from Europe as
indentured servants who eventually gained their freedom.
My research
indicates many of those in the Criswell line were probably Ulster Protestants
of Ireland who received land grants in the Northwest Territory from King James
I to fight with Britain in the Indian Wars of the 18th Century and
later to support Britain in the American Revolution. The area of Ulster in Ireland
is what today Northern Ireland. King
James the First of England had been King James VI of Scotland when Queen
Elizabeth died without an heir to the throne. When James became King of
England, Ireland and Scotland, he ceded a lot of land in Northern Ireland to
Anglican Scots to take a hold of land in Ireland for the Anglican Church.
The first
Criswell ancestor that I have identified in my lineage is a Robert
Creswell who was christened in July 1602 at St. Michael Pater Noster Church in
London. Marriage records and birth dates of his offspring are from Ireland and
Robert Creswell died in Ireland. The American birth, marriage and death rates
for the Criswell family locate the line in Maryland and Pennsylvania until David
Criswell receives an inheritance of property in Owen County, Kentucky. Marriage and birth and death dates for many of
their wives are nonexistent which me to believe these were common law marriages
and the females of unknown heritage were quite possible of Native American or
African American descent who disappeared into the western European
culture of their husbands but physical characteristics were obvious so moving a
lot in search of land and freedom was quite common.
Records indicate
that these Melungeons eventually settled in the Cumberland Gap area of
Southwestern Virginia, East Tennessee and Eastern Kentucky. The Melungeons were
continually moving west seeking opportunities denied to people of color. “You
turned white when you moved west.” According to The Melungeon People – An Appalachian Mystery, “it is very likely that
the native lines came through the female lines.” Family secrets, unexplained physical
characteristics and gaps in ancestral lines are prime examples of a mixed
heritage and all of these are part of my ancestry.
The most telling
physical attribute that led me to pursue a connection to an African American
heritage was my father’s jet black (what was left of it when I was born) wiry,
curly hair. My father had a dark, olive complexion that one of my sisters
inherited. Of all of my siblings, however, I believe I exemplify the physical
characteristics of a mixed race. My hair
was strawberry blonde when I was born but turned to red and then a deep
chestnut color by the time I was a teenager. I had ringlets of curls like
Shirley Temple and freckles. When I read James Michener’s The Covenant in the 1970’s I learned that one of the tests for
African blood was the appearance of freckles. Had I been living in South Africa
I would have been labeled “colored.” The
skin that is not freckled turns a deep red when exposed to the sun; it never
really tans and I have a condition known as vitiligo
– a loss of pigmentation that leaves white spots on the skin.
Other evidence
that I have found includes records of mulatto Criswells living in Pennsylvania
during the ante bellum period preceding the Civil War. I have found what I
believe to be a cousin. His name was David Criswell and he served in the 54th
US Colored Infantry Regiment founded in 1863 after the Emancipation
Proclamation was issued. He was killed at the Battle of Charlottesville, VA in
1864.
As further
evidence of my spotted ancestry, I have found English ancestors who fought in
the Revolutionary War and took part in the Indian Wars during the War of 1812.
One of my more colorful ancestors was a man named Davy Crockett Puckett.
Ironically, my paternal grandfather’s name was Andrew Jackson Criswell. I have ancestors in the Puckett line of my
ancestry who fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War attesting to the
fact that Kentucky was indeed divided and the term “brother against brother” is
quite fitting for the Civil War in Kentucky.
Perhaps my
father’s hesitancy to talk about any African American connection was due to the
way he and his family was treated during his childhood. He was bullied and spit
upon during his early education (he left school in the 6th grade to
help support the family) as his peers constantly ridiculed his heritage with
the racial slur “nigger in the woodpile” somewhere. I did not learn one family
secret until after my father died and learning that helped explain a lot about
his deep seated anger toward his mother.
Sometime in the 1920’s
or 30’s either just before or after my grandfather died (he died in 1933 and
was much older than my grandmother), my grandmother had an affair with a black
man and bore a child. That child lived with the African American community in
Leitchfield and my grandmother eventually went to live there after her husband
died. In 1952, when I was six years old, my mother insisted that my father go
to Leitchfield to bring his mother to live with us in Jefferson County. It was
a difficult time for him and I am sure that is what led to his nervous
breakdown shortly thereafter. My grandmother lived with us until she died in
1957 and although she lived with us, I never really knew her nor did I have the
opportunity to hear any of her stories which I regret.
As I have grown
older and started to uncover these stories, I have found a sense of pride in my
heritage even if it led to being on the outskirts of the American Dream and
living in the South with the labels of poor white trash, redneck, or hillbilly.
The Melungeons were the first descendants of the American melting pot but have
faced isolation and poverty denying them the American Dream they have pursued
for centuries. Writing this story has
been the culmination of my own journey to discover who I am, why my family was
trapped in poverty and burdened with “dysfunction” for most of my life.
Discovering my history and roots has finally led to a sense of pride in who I
am as a descendant of the culture that not only defied the boundaries of race
and disenfranchisement but also played a huge role in the settlement of this
country and building the United States of America. In sharing my history I hope
to make a stand for those people of mixed heritage who are the true Founding
Fathers and Mothers of this country.
