The Appalachian Jew

Tag: family-history

  • The Melungeons: Conversos, Crypto-Jews and Hidden Jews in Southern Appalachia – Part 5 , DNA Evidence

    The Melungeons: Conversos, Crypto-Jews and Hidden Jews in Southern Appalachia – Part 5 , DNA Evidence

    The stories of Spanish forts, towns, and mines in the Appalachian wilderness, the Yuchi/Creeks providing towns of refuge for Sephardic Jews, mysterious people in Appalachia, intermarriage with other incoming Europeans (many of whom may have been Sephardic Jews) – all of this at first glimpse seems like flights of fancy and legends. Some Melungeon researchers have been discounted and labeled as “crackpots,” and many have had to self-publish their findings. However, DNA testing has supported their claims of Iberian and Sephardic Jewish ancestry.

    The first DNA testing

    The first DNA testing of Melungeons was done in 2000, using hair samples of known Melungeons to test mitochondrial DNA, the female lines. The study was conducted by Kevin Jones, an English biologist, working with the University of Virginia’s College at Wise, VA and with University College in London. Results verified that Melungeons are a tri-racial group with European, African and Native American ancestry.

    In 2003 Dr. Donald Yates, himself of Melungeon descent, formed DNA Consultants specifically to determine an overall ethnic profile for Melungeons. The company used the cheek swab test offered at that time through Family Tree DNA to show from what parts of the world Melungeon ancestors came and the amount of admixture from Native Americans and Africans.

    All Melungeons who participated had Appalachian ancestry over the previous five generations and a surname from the list of the most common Melungeon surnames. Those results showed elevated Iberian, Middle Eastern, Native American and Sub-Saharan African ancestry, confirming that Melungeon ancestry is heavily Mediterranean and “browner” than that of their Northern European neighbors.

    Scottish Sephardic ancestry

    In addition, Yates believed that many of the 17th and early 18th century Scottish and Scots-Irish immigrants to America had Sephardic Jewish ancestry. He obtained DNA samples from known Melungeons and from two donors of each of nine Scottish families whose surnames are found among the Melungeon population.

    Yates himself had recently discovered his own hidden Jewish roots, is now a practicing Jew, and had corresponded with many of his DNA cousins who also had discovered that Judaism had been practiced in their families until fairly recently.

    The results of that study were published in 2007 and showed that the DNA locus for the Scottish families was centered in Spain and Portugal. Some of the Melungeons and the Scots tested showed exact matches to living people who self-identified as Jews.

    (One of the Scottish families tested was the Alexanders.  Yates traced the history of the Alexander family and found they arrived in Scotland during the early years of the Spanish Inquisition and settled in Stirling. Many Alexanders came to America through the colony of Maryland. My father had Alexanders in both his maternal and paternal lines, and they arrived in colonial Maryland from Stirling, Scotland.)

    My DNA results

    My own DNA testing with every major company and several smaller companies has confirmed that my Melungeon ancestry is tri-racial: European, African and Native American.

    In spite of the fact that I was told that all of my known and documented ancestors were from the British Isles and France and came to this country in the 1600s and early 1700s, I have substantial Spanish/Portuguese ancestry and also North African, Middle Eastern, Balkan, and Eastern European.

    Although DNA testing cannot conclusively prove Jewish ancestry, I have DNA relatives who have specifically self-identified as being Jewish from France, Morocco, Iraq, Greece, Turkey, and Yemen, and I am a close match with Jewish populations in Ukraine and Poland as well.

    My African ancestry is from present-day Angola and Congo, areas from which the Portuguese and Spanish obtained slaves as early as the 1500s. 

    A neighbor of mine who is of Yuchi/Creek descent, a member of the Creek nation, and a researcher of the Spanish forts and towns that were in the area where I live, helped me use specific DNA markers to verify that I am of Yuchi descent. It was the Yuchis who provided refuge to the Spanish soldiers, settlers and miners, many of them believed to be the Conversos or Crypto-Jews who were abandoned in the interior of Appalachia.

    A few final thoughts

    Additional research remains to be done on the Melungeon people. Much of the research that exists was done in the 1990s and early 2000s but has now stalled due to the disagreements among Melungeon descendants as to who is a true Melungeon.

    However, the fact remains that many Melungeons have Jewish ancestry, although they may not be aware of it.  Others know their ancestors were practicing Jews who at some point chose to hide their Judaism and convert to Christianity or chose simply to have no religious faith at all. And some, like myself, had parents who knew they were Jewish, dropped hints to their children, but denied being Jewish when directly asked about it.

    There are many questions yet to be answered. The mysterious Melungeons are still mysterious in many ways, but Melungeons are not the stuff of Appalachian legend.  We are here and have been here for over 400 years, and many of us are embracing our Jewish ancestry.

  • The Melungeons: Conversos, Crypto-Jews and Hidden Jews in Southern Appalachia – Part 2, Present-Day Melungeons

    Present-day Melungeons

    So who are the Melungeons today? There are major disagreements among Melungeon descendants as to who can claim to be a real Melungeon and what ethnicities can be found in the DNA of “real” Melungeons.

    The Melungeons who live in Hancock County, Tennessee and Wise County, Virginia claim that they are the only true Melungeons alive today. However, I am using the broader definition of possibly hundreds of thousands of people whose families have hidden their heritage or are not even aware of their heritage.

    To this day, the word “Melungeon” is used as a pejorative. In the past, the darker-skinned Melungeons who had been classified as Free Persons of Color lost their right to vote, to serve on juries, testify in court, and to receive public education. The knowledge that Melungeons are known to be tri-racial stops many modern Melungeons who look very “white” from accepting their ancestry. I proudly claim my Melungeon and Jewish heritage, but I have close friends who will not utter the word Melungeon even though they, too, are of Melungeon descent.

    How does one know one is a Melungeon? There is no actual proof, no paper genealogy.

    Families had the custom of giving children the same names. Related families with the same surname would, for example, all give the name John to a son. There could be five or six men named John Jordan, all of about the same age, all living in the same county.  

    Historically, as many as three or four families would often intermarry and then move as a group from one frontier region to another where they would continue to intermarry for three or four more generations. This occurred in my family, as the Prince, Berry, and Earle families in Virginia intermarried, migrated into the Carolinas prior to the American Revolution, and continued to intermarry into the late 1800s.

    Families often avoided the census or lied to the census takers. People researching their family history today sometimes will be able to discover quite a bit about their male ancestors but find that their female ancestors are genealogical “brick walls.”  In many families, it appears to be the female lines through which the Jewish heritage comes.

    For many people, the decidedly Mediterranean appearance, that doesn’t mesh with family stories about being 100% from the British Isles, causes them to wonder about their heritage. DNA testing then shows relatively high percentages of Iberian ancestry. And some people develop medical conditions that are found primarily in Mediterranean populations.

    Strange, non-Anglo given names are often found in Melungeon families. In my own family, for many generations, there always was at least one daughter with the middle name of Parazaide.

    Certain surnames appear over and over in families of Melungeon descent, and these names can be found in published lists. Several of these surnames are in my own family.

    And finally, many people just begin asking older relatives. At least three decades ago I asked my father directly if we were Melungeon, and his strange answer let me know we were. Similarly, his insistence that we were almost 100% English and a little “Black Dutch” was my first clue that we were, in fact, of Sephardic Jewish descent.