Goins: Definition

Jack Goins

Jack Goins is the author of The Melungeons and Other Pioneer Families (2000, Jack Harold Goins)

The Melungeons were a very dark skin group of settlers who settled in the mountains of East Tennessee and the extreme Southwestern area of Virginia beginning 1790's. Originally they were Portuguese adventurers, who came to the long shore parts of Virginia, they became friends with the Indians and intermixed with them, and subsequently with the pioneer settlers. Some of them took the names of the first settlers. The main body of this group migrated from the Pamunkey River area of Virginia to the Flat River area of NC in the 1730's-1740's. Then around 1767 they migrated from the Flat River to the back woods New River areas of Virginia and North Carolina before migrating to the Clinch River areas of Southwestern Virginia and East Tennessee.(**see source documents)

This definition was established from the written oral traditions of the Melungeons and the fact their progenitors have been documented living near the Pamunkey Indian nation in Virginia 1720 - 30's. Historical records which prove the possibility of the Melungeons statement that their Progenitors were Portuguese adventurers from the long shore parts of Virginia will be listed at the end of this article for your investigation.

The fact that the forefathers of the head and source of the Melungeons of Tennessee can be documented in this area gives this oldest written definition credibility. They migrated from Louisa County, Virginia to Orange County, NC beginning in the 1740's. No records have been found where any of these were known as Melungeons at this time. According to the old witnesses, they were given this name Melungeons after arriving in Tennessee. My research was using the Genealogy proof standard, starting at home with the known descendants and working my way back in history to my other blood relatives, or Melungeon related descendants. My research included the assistance of several researchers connected to my Goins and Minor families. I followed the Melungeons from their homelands in Tennessee to their migration points using tax, census, land, military and church records and located some of the old farms and churches in North Carolina and Virginia where they formerly lived before migrating to Tennessee.

*Source documents for above definitions and comments;

The shortest and one of the oldest written definitions was found in a dictionary written in 1892.

"One of a very dark people living in the Mountains of Tennessee”-. Dr. Isaac K. Funk in the New Standard dictionary of the English Language, p 1548. Let us examine the records and see how this dictionary definition came into existence.

Dr. Funk probably arrived at his description from printed stories taken from the oral traditions from those who were first identified as Melungeons; eventually oral traditions are captured in printed records. 

I concur, in the idea that printed references to tradition suggest that the material in question had an oral circulation prior to being captured in print.(Dissertation, Ivey)

From my own family research, there is no doubt some Melungeons had an oral tradition of their heritage, assuming Zachariah Minor was a Melungeon. In 1846 Zachariah was charged for illegal voting in an election held in Hawkins County in 1845 along with his brother Lewis and a group of Collins including Vardy. The charge by the states attorney general was they being free persons of color thus by the constitution of the United State and the State Of Tennessee were not eligible to vote or to testify against a white man in a court of law. Their sworn denial of this accusation and the eventual acquittal by two separate juries also points to the fact the Melungeons race was almost impossible to classify. The oral tradition handed down by Zachariah was that he was Portuguese and Indian; this Oral tradition was first noticed on a census by a descendant in Arkansas.

On the basis of such references, there seems to be no question that the Melungeons themselves had a tradition concerning their Origins at the time of the earliest printed reports of their existence. A correspondent whose report was printed in an 1849 issue of Littel's Living Age wrote of the Melungeons:

The legend of their history, which they carefully preserve, is this. A great many years ago, these mountains were settled by a society of Portuguese Adventurers, men and women--who came from the long-shore parts of Virginia, that they might be freed from the restraints and drawbacks imposed on them by any form of government. These people made themselves friendly with the Indians and freed, as they were from every kind of social government, they uprooted all conventional forms of society and lived in a delightful Utopia of their own creation, trampling on the marriage relation, despising all forms of religion, and subsisting upon corn (the only possible product of the soil) and wild game of the woods. These intermixed with the Indians, and subsequently their descendants (after the advances of the whites into this part of the state) with the negros and the whites, thus forming the present race of Melungens. Also notice the exact place where the Melungeon lived by this writer:  You must know that within ten miles of this owl's nest, there is a watering-place, known hereabouts as 'black-water Springs.' It is situated in a narrow gorge, scarcely half a mile wide, between Powell's Mountain and the Copper Ridge, and is, as you may suppose, almost inaccessible. A hundred men could defend the pass against even a Xerxian army. Now this gorge and the tops and sides of the adjoining mountains are inhabited by a singular species of the human animal called MELUNGENS.

Saundra Keyes Ivey commented on the correspondent in Littel's Living Age: There seems to be no reason for this writer to have invented this detail, The Melungeons carefully preserved the Legend of their history. This Legend according to the writer, included an original descent from Portuguese adventures and later intermarriages with Indians, Negroes, and whites. (Dissertation, Indiana University.)

50 years later on Friday July 2, 1898 C. H. Humble returned to the same place as the writer in Littel's Living Age, Humble writes: On Friday forenoon, July 2, the writer and rev. Joseph Hamilton, of Parkersburg, West Virginia, started in a hack from Cumberland Gap, Tenn., for Beatty Collins, chief of the Melungeons, in Blackwater Valley, Hancock County, Tenn. In this valley are the famous Vardy Springs of health-giving sulphur water, around which before the war, were many cabins for visitors.(HOME MISSION MONTHLY, Womens Board, Home missions of the Presbyterian Church U.S.A, A Visit To The Melungeons C.H. Humble)

Edward T. Price did a population study on the mixed racial clans in 1950 including the Melungeons he wrote, The PERSISTENT rumor that they are of Portuguese descent seems to be without foundation; the Melungeons themselves may have started it to counter the hints of Negro blood.  Price was apparently unaware that a printed reference to a Portuguese origin existed as early as 1849" (Dissertation, Ivey) Note: This letter was printed in the Knoxville Register September 6, 1848 quoting from the Louisville Examiner.

Let us examine some parts of this legend in Littel's Living Age: A- who came from the long-shore parts of Virginia B- These people made themselves friendly with the Indians, these intermixed with the Indians, and subsequently their descendants (after the advances of the whites into this part of the state) with the negros and the whites, thus forming the present race of Melungens

A-Will Allen Dromgoole wrote: "There are reliable parties still living who received it from old Vardy himself. The Names Collins and Gibson were also stolen from the white settlers in Virginia where the men had lived previous to emigrating to North Carolina.”

B-Lewis M. Jarvis, a leading attorney in Sneedville born 1829, his statements in an interview in the Hancock County Times: "They has been derisively dubbed with the name 'Melungeon' by the local white people who have lived here with them. It is not a traditional name or tribe of Indians.- Vardy Collins, Shepherd Gibson, Benjamin Collins, Solomon Collins, Paul Bunch and the Goodmen, chiefs and the rest of them settled here about the year 1804, possibly about the year 1795, but all these men above named, who are called Melungeons, obtained land grants and muniments of title to the land they settled on and they were the friendly Indians who came with the whites as they moved west. They came from the Cumberland County and New River, Va., stopping at various points west of the Blue Ridge. Some of them stopped on Stony Creek, Scott County, and Virginia, where Stoney Creek runs into Clinch River. Notice how these old records, one after the other, establish their credibility.

Swan M. Burnett, born 1847, reported oral traditions concerning the Melungeons when he told the American Anthropological Association that "Legends of the Melungeons I first heard at my fathers knee as a child in the mountains of Eastern Tennessee, and the name had such a ponderous and inhuman sound as to associate them in my mind with the giants and ogres of the wonder tales I listen to in the winter evenings before the crackling logs in the wide-mouthed fireplace."

Burnett also indicated that as he grew older, he learned that the Melungeons were not only different from us, the white, but also from the negroes slave or free and from the Indian.

Census and tax enumerators had a problem trying to properly identify the race of these original dark skin pioneer settlers which led to the same person being labeled White, mulatto, FPC, then white again. A good example of this is the first tax record of George Gibson 1750 Granville County NC listed white, this section of the Flat River became Orange County in 1753, George was listed mulatto in 1755, then white until this 1761 land record - 700 acres to Thomas Collins on the Flat River Chain bearers: George Gibson and Paul Collins (mulattoes) on the 1820 census showed 310 free persons of Color in Hawkins County. The 1830 census list 331 free persons of color in the section of Hawkins County, TN that became Hancock County in 1844. These same people were white on the 1840 census.

In 1840's most Melungeons were not enumerated FPC but as the Rogersville trials suggest, they were thought of as FPC by some and very hard to classify, or identify by race. This fact was introduced into politics in Tennessee, if a dark skin opponent was running for office, the opposition would accuse him of being a Melungeon.

Sandra Keys Ivey writes about this situation. That such a belief was current in more than an implied form is made obvious by the reference in an 1840 newspaper to an impudent Malungeon from Washington City. A scoundrel who is half Negro and half Indian” However, since the article, headlined Negro Speaking! combines racism with partisan politics, its reference to the Melungeons as Negro may have been simply an effort to discredit a speaker who attempted to oppose the able and eloquent speeches of Whig orators.(Quote in Dissertation, Indiana Una, Saundra Keys Ivey)

The main body of people traditionally bearing Melungeon traits fall into a basic family name grouping which includes: Boulden, also spelled Bowlin, Bowlin, Bolen, Bowling, and Boulton. Bunch, Collins, also Collens, Gibson sometimes Gipson, Goins, Goan, Goen, Goings, Minor, Miner, and Mullins. Of course by reason of several generation of intermarriages with neighboring white settlers many other names are related to Melungeon heritage.

I know several families from my own research who migrated from Hawkins County to Grainger, Claiborne, Hamiliton, and Davidson counties in Tennessee and from Hawkins County into Kentucky, Indiana and Wise and Scott County, Virginia. As one old witness in 1947 named Wash Osborne testified:

From Blackwater, Tennessee came the Sweeneys, Adkins, Lucas, Bollings, Goins and Baldwins. Uncle Poke Gibson came to Scott from Letcher County, Kentucky in about 1820. He claimed to be ˜Portuguese Indian". A few Littons came from Newmans Ridge who are member of the Melango Tribe. There are two groups of Littons members of the Melango Tribe who live in Scott County and the Littons of Wise County who are not members. The Littons of Wise are no relation to the Littons of Scott. The Bollings, who are numerous in Scott and Wise Counties, came from Newmans Ridge. The have all the features of the Indian race.

Henry Price author of "Melungeons, The Vanishing Colony Of Newman Ridge" may have used the best terminology to explain this in the closing of his book. This strange clan once the source or at least the way-station for other colonies in Davidson, Morgan, Rhea, Hamiliton, and Roane Counties, Tennessee, and Letcher and Knott Counties, Kentucky is today (1971) almost extinct. Their identity has been diluted by generations of intermarriages with outsiders and the lure of better jobs in neighboring towns and states has brought about a general exodus from Hancock County. The day must surely come when the Melungeon is no more - a vanished people-gone without a trace except perhaps for the dark-eyed, raven-haired little girl or the olive-skinned, thin-faced little boy who may appear among the posterity of East Tennessee. 

Perhaps someone like a traveling salesman or a politician for an example who knew about the mysterious Melungeons put this Melungeon label on other dark skin people who had no documental records to prove a connection, other than they were dark skin. All dark skin people were not necessarily Melungeons, even in Hancock County. The bottom line is no one has come forward with a historical written record that they were called Melungeons in others places where they formerly lived before migrating to Hawkins County. Unless someone discovers an old document that will impeach the old witnesses named in this definition, we must except their statements as factual which was basically the word Melungeon was like a nickname placed on a certain group of people in a specific time and location.

The question of Melungeon descent and Melungeon related can only be established by individual family researchers tracing their families by painstaking research. Some Melungeons may not appear on County and State records but may be established by a researchers family history. Everyone has their own story of why they are interested in the Melungeons. After discovering some of my foreparents were labeled Melungeon by historians, I began a search to satisfy for my own curiosity and to discover the truth about my own family and the Melungeons. Which includes private DNA test and those test reveal my Goins foreparent who came to Hawkins County was probably 75% Native American and he did have a tradition of Portuguese and Indian Heritage.

Thanks, Jack Goins

For other references on the Spanish, Portuguese adventurers in American see information below.

European contact did not start with John Smith and the Jamestown Colony. It began, in fact, with Spanish and French explorers in the early and middle 1500's. The English were relative latecomers to the Chesapeake. Starting about 1560 the Spanish adventurers had substantial and repeated altercations with Chesapeake Native Americans. The Spaniards took a young boy to Europe where he became a Catholic and was renamed Don Luis de Velasco. He was returned to his tribe when they established a Jesuit mission, probably on the York River, in 1570. Native Americans exterminated the Jesuits, except for one Spanish boy, who was eventually liberated, but not without the killing or capture of more Native Americans.
Almost two decades later, in 1588, the Spanish mariner Vincente Gonzales explored all the way to the head of Chesapeake Bay, while across the Atlantic the English were fighting off his nation's great Armada.

Eight Spanish Jesuits who sailed up Virginia's James River in 1570 to convert American Indians and were killed by Indians are being promoted for sainthood by the Diocese of Richmond. Bishop Walter F. Sullivan, DD, announced the formation of a tribunal that will campaign the Vatican to recognize the Jesuits as martyrs and saints. Fr Gerald P Fogarty, SJ, who teaches Catholic history at the University of Virginia, said Fr Baptista de Segura SJ headed an expedition from Florida in August 1570.

Accompanying Segura were Fr Luis de Quiros SJ; three Jesuit brothers, Gabriel Gomez, Sancho Zeballos, and Pedro Linares; and three novices, Gabriel de Solis, Juan Bautista Mendez, and Cristobal Redondo.

The group was guided by Don Luis de Velasco, a Virginia Indian who had been captured by Europeans 10 years earlier and was taught Spanish so he could serve as an interpreter.
The Jesuits arrived at Chesapeake Bay in September 1570, then continued about 40 miles up the James River to what is now College Creek. They then traveled by land to a settlement off the York River. De Velasco soon left the Jesuits' mission to live with the Indians, and in February 1571 led the killing of the missionaries, according to the accounts. The only person spared from the group was Alonso de Olmos, a boy whose father was a Spanish settler in Florida. The fact that the Indians didn't kill the only non-Jesuit in the group indicates the Jesuits were slain because of their religion, according to Catholic scholars. [Source: AP]

http://www.jesuitswisprov.org/news/july01d.html

4000 Spanish Soldiers died prisoners of war at Yorktown AND Spanish soldiers fought throughout America during the American Revolution.

Virginia- Spanish speaking from the 1500's
1500's Spanish settlements: The Spanish Jesuit Mission in Virginia, 1570-1572; Hispanics funded over $120,000,000.00 in today’s dollars to the American Continental Army-Congress- General George Washington to help win our independence. Over 4000 Spanish soldiers died as British Prisoners of War at Yorktown while aiding in the Americans in the American Revolution. Hispanics fought British troops throughout the Americas during the American Revolution.