Genealogy Wise

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Do you think you have Melungeon ancestry? See this Link for common surnames.
http://homepages.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~mtnties/name.html

How many are in your tree?

There are also physical aspects, which are common among people with Melungeon lines.

My family has the following surnames:
BELL (VA to KY)
COLLINSWORTH (KY)
LAWSON (Scotland to VA to KY)
TOLLIVER (VA)


(NOTE: only a part of the article is posted, please go to article to read the complete piece)

DNA study seeks origin of Appalachia's Melungeons

"... Genetic evidence shows that the families historically called Melungeons are the offspring of sub-Saharan African men and white women of northern or central European origin.

Beginning in the early 1800s, or possibly before, the term Melungeon (meh-LUN'-jun) was applied as a slur to a group of about 40 families along the Tennessee-Virginia border. But it has since become a catch-all phrase for a number of groups of mysterious mixed-race ancestry.

In recent decades, interest in the origin of the Melungeons has risen dramatically with advances both in DNA research and in the advent of Internet resources that allow individuals to trace their ancestry without digging through dusty archives.

Estes and her fellow researchers theorize that the various Melungeon lines may have sprung from the unions of black and white indentured servants living in Virginia in the mid-1600s, before slavery.

They conclude that as laws were put in place to penalize the mixing of races, the various family groups could only intermarry with each other, even migrating together from Virginia through the Carolinas before settling primarily in the mountains of East Tennessee.

Among them were the Montauks, the Mantinecocks, Van Guilders, the Clappers, the Shinnecocks and others in New York. Pennsylvania had the Pools; North Carolina the Lumbees, Waccamaws and Haliwas and South Carolina the Redbones, Buckheads, Yellowhammers, Creels and others. In Louisiana, which somewhat resembled a Latin American nation with its racial mixing, there were Creoles of the Cane River region and the Redbones of western Louisiana, among others." -- article

http://news.yahoo.com/dna-study-seeks-origin-appalachias-melungeons-201144041.html

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