by Lisa Alther
But America has never really been a melting pot, in any case. It’s actually a stir-fry. Like picky children, each generation selects only the vegetables it deems palatable. My grandmother Reed speared the Tidewater ones, and my great-grandmother Pealer the Mayflower ones. But the other heritages were still there, however repressed or mangled, lending their scents and flavors to the entire skillet.
I ponder contacting the relatives who’ve helped me reach this point, to share my findings. But Hetty, Bob, Vonda, and Aunt Ura — to say nothing of my Reed grandparents — are all dead. Although this makes me sad, it’s for the best. Their origin stories got them through life. To have invalidated them would have been like clipping the wings of elderly bluebirds. But history is made to be revised. I revised theirs, as I hope my descendants will revise my version when more sophisticated DNA techniques become available.
The most important lesson my exploration into the Melungeon diaspora has taught me is that it’s apparently possible for congenital belligerents to live cheek by jowl in peace and love. Greeks and Turks, Irish and English, Arabs and Jews, Protestants and Catholics, Christians and Muslims, those with complexions of every hue — all can amalgamate into one people. The Melungeons have proven that the children of Cain and Abel have the capacity to become kissing cousins. All that such a transformation requires is ostracism by your neighbors and the threat of imminent extinction.
As I drive out of Kingsport, I pass a steady stream of RVs the size of small ranch houses headed into town like covered wagons converging on Dodge City during the gold rush. This is a NASCAR weekend, and 160,000 Tomato People will soon cram the motels and campgrounds for a hundred miles in every direction. The rival churches have posted beguiling quips on their marquees in an effort to lure itinerant worshippers to their services on Sunday morning before the Food City 500 race starts. One by one, they flash past me:
LORD, HELP ME BETHE PERSON MY DOG BELIEVES METO BE.
LIVE SO THAT YOUR PREACHER DOESN’T
HAVE TO LIE AT YOUR FUNERAL.
WHAT DID NOAH DO WITH THE WOODPECKERS?
BLESSED ARE THE NASCAR FANS
FORTHEY SHALL PAY LOCAL SALES TAX.
It’s past time for me to retreat to the shores of Lake Champlain. I’ve started wondering whether I could make a living down here composing slogans for church signboards….
Acknowledgements
It takes a village to write a book, and my reading list includes just a handful of the titles I consulted during my ten years of researching and writing. So I thank the ranks of anonymous explorers, historians, sociologists, archaeologists, geneticists, linguists, and genealogists whose work helped me shape and sharpen my own perceptions.
I also thank my faceless Internet colleagues at the Roots-web Genealogy-DNA list, and especially its founder Ann Turner, who kindly fielded my many questions. Any misinterpretation of their answers is my own doing.
With their groundbreaking book The Melungeons, Brent Kennedy and Robyn Vaughan Kennedy blazed trails through the thickets of Melungeon myth that made my own journey easier. Many other Melungeon descendants and researchers also shared important findings with me. My family patiently put up with my shifting theories about our ancestral origins.
Robert Gottlieb gave me the idea for this memoir and generously offered useful feedback on its early drafts, as did Doris Lessing and Ramsay Wood.
The keen editorial eye of my agent, Martha Kaplan, helped me sharpen the focus of my story and eliminate digressions, and she found it a happy home at Arcade Publishing with Dick and Jeannette Seaver. My editor there, James Jayo, smoothed out the rough patches in my prose and in my logic and made the process of turning the manuscript into a finished book a real pleasure. And Casey Ebro’s impressive publicity expertise has helped bring the book to the attention of interested readers.
Jan Hanford built a wonderful new stable in cyberspace for this book and my previous ones. My daughter Sara Bostwick provided my author photo and the moral support she’s always given my projects. Deborah Deutschman, Nellie McNeil, Diane Patterson, Jody Crosby, Jo Carson, Steve Fischer, Merritt and Rita Shobe, and the late Idries Shah made valuable contributions to my story as it unfolded. So did my cousins Ava McCoy, Greg Vanover, Wilma Jack, the late Bob Artrip, and the late Hetty and Elihu Sutherland.
Ina Danko’s colorful anecdotes about her Melungeon family have entertained and instructed me for the past decade. Knowing her has reminded me of all that I admire most about East Tennesseans.
A few names and locations have been changed to protect me from the guilty.
Selected Reading
ON THE MELUNGEONS
Ball, Bonnie. Melungeons: Their Origin and Kin. Johnson City, Tenn.: Overmountain Press, 1969, rev. 1992.
Berlin, Ira. Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998.
Black, Edwin. War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race. New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 2003.
DeMarce, Virginia. “Verry Slitly Mixt: Tri-Racial Isolate Families of the Upper South — A Genealogical Study.” National Genealogical Quarterly, March 1992.
. “Looking at Legends — Lumbee and Melungeons: Applied
Genealogy and the Origins of Tri-racial Isolate Settlements.” National Genealogical Quarterly, March 1993, pp. 24-45.
Ehle, John. Trail of Tears: The Rise and Fall of the Cherokee Nation. New York: Anchor Books, 1997.
Elder, Pat. Melungeons: Examining An Appalachian Legend. Blountville, Tenn.: Continuity Press, 1999.
Everett, C. S. “Melungeon History and Myth.” Appalachian Journal, Summer 1999, pp. 358-404.
Fiske, Warren. “The Black and White World of Walter Ashby Plecker.” Virginian Pilot, Aug. 18, 2004.
Heinegg, Paul. Free African Americans of North Carolina and Virginia. Baltimore: Clearfield, 1997.
Hudson, Charles. Knights of Spain, Warriors of the Sun: Hernando de Soto and the Souths Ancient Chiefdoms. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1997.
. The Juan Pardo Expeditions. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian
Institution Press, 1990.
Johnson, Mattie Ruth. My Melungeon Heritage: A Story of Life on Newman’s Ridge. Johnson City, Tenn.: Overmountain Press, 1997.
Kennedy, Brent, with Robyn Vaughan Kennedy. The Melungeons: The Resurrection of a Proud People. Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1997.
, with Joseph M. Scolnick Jr. From Anatolia to Appalachia: A
Turkish-American Dialogue. Macon, Ga.: Mercer Press, 2003.
Reed, John Shelton, Jr. “Mixing in the Mountains.” Southern Cultures 3/4 (Winter 1997): 25-36.
Rountree, Helen C. Pocahontas’s People: The Powhatan Indians of Virginia through Four Centuries. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1990.
Wilson, Darlene, and Patricia D. Beaver. “Transgressions in Race and Place: The Ubiquitous Native Grandmother in America’s Cultural Memory.” In Neither Separate Nor Equal: Women, Race, and Class in the South, edited by Barbara Ellen Smith, pp. 34-56. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1999.
Winkler, Wayne. Walking Toward the Sunset: The Melungeons of Appalachia. Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 2004.
ON DNA
Olson, Steve. Mapping Human History: Discovering the Past through Our Genes. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2002.
Oppenheimer, Stephen. The Real Eve: Modern Man’s Journey Out of Africa. New York: Carroll and Graf, 2003.
Relethford, John H. Reflections of Our Past: How Human History Is Revealed in Our Genes. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 2003.
Smolenyak, Megan, and Ann Turner. Trace Your Roots with DNA: Using Genetic Tests to Explore Your Family Tree. Emmaus, Pa.: Ro-dale, 2004.
Sykes, Bryan. The Seven Daughters of Eve: The Science That Reveals Our Genetic Ancestry. New York: W. W. Norton, 2001.
Wells, Spencer. The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2002.
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