Melungeons
Many people go through their whole life not knowing their heritage. I recently had an opportunity to do a little research on my ancestors and I found my pedigree is very diverse; their history ranges the Isle of Man, to the mountaintops of the Appalachian Mountains. This is the part of my research that became very difficult. It seems that an abundance of people from the Appalachian region have been overlooked or shunned by the American government and history alike, they are the Melungeons. I became very interested in finding out some answers about the Melungeons when I was informed one of my relatives was a very famous Melungeon named Mahala Collins which we will talk about later in this paper. There is really no definite answer on where these people came from, or why they were here. I have discovered a few theories, from them being Portuguese sailors, to criminals that England banished from their country. Wherever they came from it wasn't long before they were being discriminated against here by the American government and by the American people in general. They were forced into refuge, high in the mountainous region of the Appalachians. I wanted to know who were these people they called Melungeons and why
Though many people consider Melungeons a particular race of people, this is not true, Melungeon is a culture, are a group of people with the same interest in mind, living free. They didn't have much monetarily, but as long as they didn't have to interact with the new settlers moving into America they weren't persecuted for their dark complexion (Evans 23-24). She was a very large woman, approximately 550 pounds. The most popular of these people was Mahala Collins. There are many stories or possibilities of where the Melungeon people originated. The Melungeon people are made up of many different races, so it very difficult to ascertain that it is anything but coincidence that a few diseases seem more common among the Melungeon people (Kennedy, Statement 3). The first is that are the people from the Lost Colony of Roanoke, in 1585 England sent a ship with 108 people aboard, and they landed in Roanoke, Virginia. Maybe trying to study the meaning of the word Melungeon would give some insight to who these mysterious people were. They kept retreating further and further west until they were deep into the Appalachian Mountains. It is a belief that these colonists moved away from Roanoke and bladed in with the nearby Indian tribes. Melungeons are generally believed to be White Northern European, Black African, or Red American Indian (Douglas et al. These two were best known for their silverwork and their excellent counterfeiting of the Spanish milled dollar. They lived off the land and were totally self sufficient. They had to cut a portion out of the wall of the house to get her out to be buried, which was a few hundred feet from the house (Kennedy, Melungeons 16-19). There are a few that seem a little more common among the Melungeon people.
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