The Melungeons of Newman’s Ridge: An Insider’s Perspective

I am a descendent of the Melungeon families of Newman’s Ridge and Vardy Valley in Hancock County, Tennessee. The early years of my life were spent in Snake Hollow, in the valley between Newman’s Ridge and Powell Mountain. I grew up close to the small mountain farms my mother’s family had lived on for generations. When I was fourteen years old, my family returned to Newman’s Ridge and built our home on top of the mountain above Vardy School on land my family has lived on for unknown generations. We built our home about fifty yards from the place the roof of my paternal great grandmother’s home still laid on the ground. A few of the old Cedar trees that used to serve as a place of worship for the community stand in my parents’ yard. Several years later I built my own home on the Vardy side of Newman’s Ridge.

When my family returned to the ridge there were remnants of the original Melungeon families who had lived there for generations. While Melungeon heritage is celebrated throughout Southern Appalachia and in Hancock County, most families on the ridge are still looked down upon as lower class, and some of them as troublemakers. They are seen as untrustworthy and lazy. What I found on the ridge were warm, honest, hardworking people who find happiness in family and in being close to the land. Success on the ridge is not necessarily determined by bank accounts or social status. The old ways are still observed here: take only what you need, treat your neighbor as you would like to be treated, stay close to your family.

Melungeon Origins

The origin of the word Melungeon, like the people it defines, is still debated today. Melungeon was first used to define a group of isolated families in Southern Appalachia that were considered tri-racial and shunned by their communities due to their dark skin and strange ways. They were considered second class citizens and had to fight for basic human rights. Over the past few centuries the word Melungeon reached the status of a racial slur and few were willing to admit even a small connection to those families labeled Melungeons. The Melungeons of Newman’s Ridge have always been a people of mystery. The stories of our origins sound like great tales of adventure told around a campfire under the full moon of the mountains: Portuguese pirates stranded off the coast of the Carolinas, “Gypsies” exiled and wandering through the mountains, early Spanish explorers finding paradise in Appalachia and becoming family with the native tribes. Haunting tales tell of young lovers refusing to be separated by society because of skin color, leaving their families and homes to make a life of their own deep in the old mountains. Some have claimed we are the lost colony of Roanoke or possibly the wondering souls of a lost tribe of Israel. But just like many campfire stories handed down through time, much of our history is legend. Even today no one is sure of the truth. As early as 1690, French traders began to bring tales from the mountains of a small colony of Moorish people with European features and olive skin living in Southern Appalachia. Early explorers like John Sevier came to what is now known as Hancock County, Tennessee, in 1784 and were amazed to find a colony of dark-skinned, reddish-brown complexioned people. The 1830 census records of Hawkins County, before Hancock was formed, list our families as Free People of Color, neither white, black, or Indian. They struggled with early settlers for basic rights; the right to own land, vote, legally marry and be treated fairly as humans. Our ancestors guarded their history and their true selves not for shame, but by necessity. Our story has been veiled by time and precaution and now much has been lost.

Melungeon Pride

By the time I was born in 1978, the essence of the word Melungeon was beginning a change. The play “Walk Toward the Sunset,” written by renowned...