What do you know about Melungeons?
Until I read Barbara Kingsolver’s 2022 novel Demon Copperhead, I had never seen the word Melungeon (pronounced muh-luhn-juhn). I wondered who were orf are these people? It turns out it is the name given to a “race” of people who settled in the Appalachian Mountains of the USA, probably as early as 1567. Their heritage is extremely confusing, even to academics who are studying them today. There are efforts to identify Melungeon DNA, but it is proving to be a challenge to professional genealogists. No wonder.
The Melungeons live in the Cumberland Gap, eastern Tennessee, southern Virginia and eastern Kentucky. They are of such mixed heritage that the name comes from the French word melange which means mixture. They are indeed a mixture, coming from European, North American Indian and light-skinned sub-Saharan African backgrounds. Some sources add Turkish, Moorish, Arabic and Jewish to the mixture. In other words, they are hybrids with many more components than most of us have. This is all the result of intermarriage within their own community, although nowadays many are “marrying white” which will further complicate their family trees and their DNA.
How would you recognize a Melungeon if you met one? There’s another quandary. Some Melungeons have dark skin, but blue or light-coloured eyes. Some, like Demon Copperhead, have red hair and green eyes. Add to this the fact that there may be a wide range of colourings within a family, so you might have dark-skinned and red-headed brothers and sisters. Some may look middle-Eastern or Mediterranean. All have a hump or ridge at the back of the head.
Are there any Melungeons that we can identify from history, or from the movie screen? Only two are well-known - Elvis Presley and Abraham Lincoln, although there must be many more who prefer not to be identified. The term Melungeon has been used as a racial slur, so many prefer to keep their heritage secret.
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