I never heard the word Melungeon until I was a grown woman and my aunt brought me an article about Elvis Presley and Abraham Lincoln being “Melungeons” and told me about a book by Brent Kennedy.

My aunt, who is probably reading this blog post, told me that she believed we might be “Melungeons” because our family on my mom’s side had originally come from Hawkins and Hancock County Tennessee and with a list of names like Blevins, Collins, Sizemore, Gibsons, Bowlings, etc., it certainly did seem possible.

So began my research. I discovered no less than 30 surnames in my mom’s family tree that were known Melungeon surnames, coming from known Melungeon areas. Proving that she was or wasn’t Melungeon was something else again. And if she was a Melungeon? Then what? What did that mean anyway? And did my dad have Melungeon ancestry, too? If so, what did that mean for me? I contemplated DNA testing when it first came out but I was scared of it. I doubted it’s accuracy and I questioned what the testing companies would do with my info.

I watched a PBS special on Melungeons and read Jesse Stuart’s Daughter of the Legend. There was definitely something drawing me to these people and I just couldn’t let it go. I then read Brent Kennedy’s work and I thought that he had a coon treed, so to speak. I got online and googled as much as I could. There wasn’t as much info out then as there is now on Melungeons, but I was feeling my “Anatolian bump” and sticking my tongue into my “shovel teeth” and nothing how my second toe is longer than my first toe and how the corners of my eyes overlap, I had “almost” black hair, blue eyes and all those “markers” that are supposed to indicate Melungeon heritage. I had every one of them, of course. So, what did that even mean, really? How did it impact my life?

I put it aside for a while. My life got busy and the knowledge of Melungeon heritage got stored in a file in my head as I went about my business. Then, I was asked to give a talk on Melungeons. I reached out to a brilliant researcher name Joanne Pezullo. She sent me amazing links that hadn’t existed during my first stomp through the Melungeon patch.  I will forever be grateful to her for her help in my Melungeon understanding.

Next, I started reading the blog of another amazing researcher, Vance Hawkins and reading works by Richard Carlson. I delved into the Melungeon research done by DNA Consultants and visited every Melungeon site I could find on the internet. I collected articles and looked into local families here in Kentucky.

I finally submitted to the temptation to have a DNA test done, not just one but TWO! I reasoned that if the powers that be wanted my DNA, they had access to it anyway. I mean I worked for a public school system, my off-the-gridness and privacy were forfeited the minute I became a teacher.

By the time it was said and done, and I had run my raw data through multiple calculators and even gone to Standford University’s Genotation, it turned out that I had DNA from 6 out of the 7 continents, so that didn’t tell me the answers I had hoped for. I had segments from the British Isles, Iberia, Basque Country, Slavic, Baltic, Finnish, Native American,  West Africa, Steppe, Anatolian, Southern Asia (Northwest India and Pakistan), and even Scandinavia, specifically Finland. I was thoroughly mixed, therefore, I decided to zero in on the time period when the Melungeons first came into contact with English colonists.

Luckily, 23andMe and CRI Genetics both give you this time line that shows at approximately what time in history certain elements were introduced into your genes. My timeline showed that during the 1700s to early 1800s, I had West African (Mali and Morrocco), Iberian and Native American ancestors. Now, granted, some of that may have been due to my paternal grandfather being Spanish/Native mix but it also coincided with the time of the Melungeon families coming into my line of direct ancestry.

So, I turned my attention to my maternal ancestors who settled in Wayne, Clinton, Russell, Cumberland and Adair County, Kentucky. If you look at a map, you can see that all of these counties are adjacent and center around one important geographical feature, the Cumberland River. They all lived within about 40 miles of each other, if you go as the crow flies, or cross country as they did in the days way back before roads were carved out between the twisting, winding hills of southern Kentucky.