Well, according to a google search, this woman has “typical” Melungeon features.
Well, my husband is said to have American Indian ancestry, while there is no known history of that in my family. When I first read about shovel teeth, I felt my teeth and thought I felt a curve. Then I went and felt his teeth. His teeth have a very distinctive curve; I knew then that I did not have shovel teeth. I think only comparison can really show the difference.
Holy crap. I think my family may be Melungeon. My grandmother’s family has always been referred to as “Black Irish,” and I have the head ridge and the shovel teeth. I also look a bit like that picture: http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/380000/images/_384502_melungeon150.jpg
and one of my grandmothers does even more so. There were always rumors of African-American and proof of Native American heritage in my family.
And my family traces back to Virginia.
My friend who grew up in Wise County, Virginia showed me a photo of his great-great-great-grandfather: he had very strong African facial characteristics (strong cheekbones, wide nose bridge, dark skin tone etc), pale eyes, and curly white hair.
My friend and his siblings are all in their 40s; they are intrigued with their Melungeon ancestry. Their parents, however, don’t freely admit to Melungeon roots. My friend says many people, especially of older generations, do not take kindly to the suggestion that they are part African or Cherokee. In years past many of your personal freedoms were determined by what color the authorities thought your granddaddy was.
I think a big part of the fascination is that families would keep it hush-hush if they had Melungeon background. People researching their geneology will run into some dicrepancies and missing records, then dig up some old family secrets. That gets exciting.
The supposed Turkish etymology is melun can, ‘accursed soul’. Pronounced “melloon John.” Derived from Arabic mal‘ûn ‘accursed’, from la‘ana ‘to curse’ + Persian jân ‘soul’. (The Ottoman Turkish language used a lot of Arabic and Persian loanwords. In modern Turkish spelling, they use the letter c to represent the sound of j.)
I’m skeptical of this proposed etymology. On the one hand, there is a loose match between the shape of the Turkish phrase and the name Melungeon. However, it seems a bit farfetched. It might be true, but I tend to doubt it.
I have my own theory: Melungeon comes from Italian. It’s because they tend to be a bit darker in skin color than the Anglo and Celtic Americans around them. In Italian slang, a black person is called melangiani, which is southern Italian dialect for melanzane, ‘eggplant’, because of the eggplant’s dark skin. Melangiani is pronounced “Melon Johnny.” This is closer in sound to the word Melungeon.
The Italian word melanzane is influenced by the Greek word [symbol]melan[/symbol] melan- ‘black, dark-colored’. But it actually derives from the same origin as French aubergine, Portuguese beringela, Arabic and Persian bâdinjân, Sanskrit vâtingâna, originally from the Dravidian language family of south India.
I think I may be one too.
I thought bumps on the teeth were normal. Then one day I had DH feel my bumps and he went “EWWWWWWW! How do you stand that?!!” I felt my daughter’s teeth and she doesn’t have them either.
Plus my family’s from east KY and my maiden name is supposedly a common Melungeon name.
Weird, though. I’m white as a lily and I don’t have any Mediterranean diseases.
Posted by Krokodil:
I was in a college production of that play. It is about a “witch-boy” – a supernatural being – who falls in love with a human girl. She and her family and all the human characters are clearly hillbillies, but the word “Melungeon” is never mentioned, nor is there anything to suggest the characters are anything other than ordinary white Highland Southerners of the Appalachians or the Ozarks.
Wow! I thought this thread had petered out. Seeing as it has been revitalized, I figure I best drop in. I’ve heard of the claim of “Melungeon” being derived from Turkish (along with “allegheny” and “shenandoah”, among other words) but somehow I’m not convinced. Like I said earlier, I’m skeptical of most literature written on the Melungeons, because when we’re not portrayed as some freaky mongrels living in the backwoods, then we’re used as a “lost race” to advance someone’s pet agenda or theory.
As for my family, we’ve always known what we were, though some of the older members prefer not to remark on it. In fact, when I was born, I was so small and dark that it was thought I was a reversion to “type” and fretting ensued, but much to my mother’s relief my hair and skin lightened as I grew older.
Are Melungeons generally short then?
With reference to the Lost Colony of Roanoke Island, it was one of my favorite stories from my elementary school history book. It appears that Captain White was under Sir Walter Raleigh and took some colonists to this island off what is now North Carolina. He went back home to get more provisions. His ship was commandeered by England to fight the Spanish. He did not get it back for two years. When he arrived back at Roanoke Island, there was no trace of the colonists. The first English child born in the Americas was Virginia Dare and his granddaughter so you know he looked long and hard. All they found was a tree with the word “Crotan” carved on it. I have always wondered about that word, especially since there is a European group of Croatians. I was surprised above to see one of the lists of cultures that influenced the melungeons to be “Croatians”. Surely it is not the same European group. As we know, many of the Indian tribes are known by various names–their own, what their enemies called them, and various English, Spanish or French names. Now comes the strange part. My history book ended with Captain White not finding them. Later, I read something about the first U. S. Census in 1781. A census taker on horseback went to a tribe in North Carolina known as the Halifax Indians (which I think were also called the Lumbee). The name “Lumbee” may raise a flag for you as a name of one group of supposed melungeons. The census taker was astonished not only to find that some of these Indians had blue eyes but that they spoke–get this-Elizabethan English. So when the Lost Colony ran out of food, could the Lumbees/Halifax/Croatans made friends with them? And eventually they all intermarried and shared cultures and languages? It is comforting to believe that that baby girl and her family did not die of starvation.
Welcome to the Straight Dope, sandrasue. Don’t be discouraged if you don’t get any response to your post - this thread is from 2003. SDMB tradition requires I make a zombie joke, but I shall forbear.
I believe most historians now think that the survivors of the Roanoke Island colony sought shelter with the nearby Croatan tribe on Hatteras Island, with whom they were on good terms. Not sure about the connection to the Lumbee, who I believe did not emerge as a distinct tribe until much later.
@OP
I don’t know if you about this (if you do forgive the repetition) but there is an interesting (possible) connection to the Roanoke Colony.
There were two groups of English at Roanoke before the disappearing colony. The first was a group of 107 soldiers left in 1585 and were supposed to get supplies from England. These didn’t arrive and Sir Francis Drake passed by in 1586 while returning to England after a privateering raid on the Spanish in the Caribbean. He offered the soldiers a ride home and they accepted. Shortly after the relief ships arrive and find no one. They left a small group (IIRC 13 men) with a small ship and head back to England. When what we know as the colonists arrive they find one skeleton, no ship and no one else.
At long last we get to the connection!
When Drake arrives he is loaded with plunder captured from the Spanish - including a large number of Turking slaves the Spanish had captured in the Meditteranean. He dumps them off on the coast (freeing them is not quite the right word) to make room for the soldiers and they vanish from history. Historians have speculated that they may have been the source of the trace Turkish genetics found in this area.