Hawkins County Archives Project
by Wayne Winkler
Cleaning and Preserving the Documents
Life on the Frontier
Melungeons
The Truth Behind Melungeon Counterfeiting
The Project Continues
| August 2005 Photographs by Brent Kennedy A project to restore and preserve records in Hawkins County, Tennessee is providing a unique view of life in the region since the formation of the county in the late 18th century. It is also shedding light on aspects of Melungeon history that previously were unknown or misunderstood. An axiom taught to many graduate students in history, only slightly exaggerated, holds that every county courthouse in America burned sometime between 1840 and 1920. Certainly the loss of vital records is a situation with which nearly all historians and genealogists are familiar. Hawkins County The Friends of Hawkins County Archives Project is an outgrowth of the efforts of genealogist and Melungeon researcher Jack Goins, author of Melungeons and Other Pioneer Families. Goins say the records cover court proceedings in Hawkins County from 1795 up to 1950. “We are cleaning them and placing in acid free legal size folders, and indexing them as per the rules of the Tennessee State Archives. After the circuit court records are completed a microfilm crew will film them as we start on the Chancery Court records following the same procedures.” Goins says that eventually all county documents, including marriage records, will be indexed, microfilmed, and preserved. |
Cleaning and Preserving the Documents
Unlike many counties across the United States, Hawkins County still has most of their court records dating back to the formation of the county in 1786. However, the documents were not organized, and were stored in various locations in boxes. Goins had spent countless hours rummaging through these records and was aware of the disorganization, with some chancery court records stored in the same boxes as circuit court records. “I had searched through these records before I wrote my book. I guess I’m one of those who mixed them up,” he recalled, laughing. “But I tried to put them back where I found them.” |
| Recognizing the need for these documents to be organized and preserved, Goins and other volunteers formed the Friends of Hawkins County Archives Project in January 2005. In June, they received a $5,000 grant from the Tennessee State Library and Archives. FOHCAP is also accepting donations from the public to help purchase cleaning materials and acid-free folders for storage. The group has already created an online index, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which maintains extensive genealogical records, will assist in microfilming these documents so that they will be available to libraries and online. Cleaning and organizing the documents is a time-consuming and labor-intensive process. Approximately 30 people are involved in this project. Don Farquar, vice-president of FOHCAP, says that on any given day, as many as three to 15 volunteers will come in and work on the documents. “Usually, you come in and pick up a pack of records out of the box and start the cleaning process.” New volunteers are taught how to handle and clean documents. “Dirt is a real problem,” Farquar says. “Some of those records were stored in an old coal bin, so there’s dust on almost all of them. You have to be very careful. You start at the center and work out do you don’t tear the paper.” Dry cleaning sponges are used to remove dirt and dust from the documents, which are often very fragile and brittle. Documents are put into folders which help smooth out wrinkles; the folders are acid-free to prevent any further deterioration of the paper. The folders are then organized in ten-year increments and indexed on a computer database. |
Each court case gets its own folder; some cases generated so many documents that more than one folder is used to hold them. Criminal cases are indexed by the defendant’s last name; civil cases by plaintiff and by defendant. A few documents were so badly damaged by water inside the courthouse that they cannot be deciphered or repaired. These documents are not thrown out, however, but stored separately in folders. |
Life on the Frontier
| According to Jack Goins, “One thing you find out right off the bat: people are not meaner today than they were back then. There’s just more people. They’re doing the same crimes; there are just different ways they done it, I guess. I mean, we’ve had everything. We had one woman who fed her baby to the hogs. It doesn’t get any worse than that, does it?” “The most common cause [for an individual to be brought into court] was adultery. You didn’t do it. They’d charge you with lewdness and adultery if you weren’t married. If you were living with someone and you weren’t married, they’d charge both of you.” Other common crimes in the early 19th century included “tippling” (the distribution or consumption of alcohol), disruption of church services, and gambling. “The most common game was ‘seven-up,’” says Goins. “I don’t know how you play seven-up, but that’s what they were playing.” The Civil War was particularly divisive in East Tennessee. The state was officially Confederate, but the majority of people in Hawkins County – and East Tennessee as a whole – were loyal to the United States. However, the region was under Confederate occupation during most of the war. An absence of any court records for the Civil War period suggests a complete breakdown of normal judicial procedures and a situation similar to martial law. Though the Unionists of Hawkins County were powerless under the dominating Confederate authorities, court records for the period immediately following the war show several individuals charged with treason and other crimes committed during the war. “I think during the Civil War,” Goins says, “your officials, like the mayors and stuff like that, was really Union. After the war, they started trying the rebels for – well, for murder, really.” Christopher Sizemore, brother of the notorious Bill Sizemore, was killed in the immediate aftermath of the war in the summer of 1865. “They [the Unionists] charged about twelve men with murdering him. Of course, [the defendants] argued it was an act of war. We’ve not found the results of those trials, but they tried a lot of people. They charged some real famous men in this county, like C. C. Miller, who owned the old Yellow Store, back prior to the war. He’s one of those that was charged with treason.” Despite the atrocities committed during the war, most of those charged in the war’s aftermath were not punished. Goins believes this was an effort to heal the bitterness in the war’s aftermath. “Evidently they made some kind of a reasonable commitment to live together; I don’t know. See, there were a lot of them charged with stealing cattle, stuff like that. They paid a lot of claims. It was a bad time, really.” |
Melungeons
| Much of the interest in the old Hawkins County records centers on the Melungeons. Hancock County was formed from part of Hawkins County in the mid 1840s, and many of the early land deeds and other records pertaining to the earliest Melungeon families are contained in the Hawkins County records. One of the most prominent cases involving Melungeons was the illegal voting trial involving Vardemon Collins, Solomon Collins, Ezekiel Collins, Levi Collins, Andrew Collins, Wiatt Collins, and brothers Zachariah and Lewis Minor. The original Tennessee constitution provided voting rights to any free male, but when the constitution was revised in 1834, the franchise was restricted to white males. The issue then became whether the Melungeons were considered “white,” or at least white enough to vote. Goins has spent years researching these cases. Unfortunately, not all the relevant records have been found. “We’ve found several parts,” Goins says. Unfortunately, some records were apparently destroyed or thrown out. “It looks like they threw the ones I really wanted away. We’re just finding bits and pieces of those trials. We found several parts, though; we found out that their attorney was Colonel John Netherland.” Legend holds that the defendants were acquitted because they were shown not to have flat feet, considered an indication of African ancestry. “I don’t know whether they really did the flat-footedness or not, but they may have.” The Hawkins County Grand Jury indicted the defendants, declaring them to be “free persons of color” and as such ineligible to vote. Goins found that Vardemon “Vardy” Collins’ case was settled out of court due to his age. “He was sick and unable to travel. So he paid a fine; I don’t know how much.” The other trials continued from 1846 to January of 1848. “The Collinses were tried first, on a Saturday, and were found ‘not guilty’,” according to Goins. “Well, Wiatt Collins, I believe, was the one that was tried. Then the state dropped the charges on the other Collinses because they were brothers and cousins. Then they tried my great-grandfather, who was Zachariah Minor. He was found ‘not guilty,’ so they dropped the charges on his brother.” As might be expected, no one with traditional Melungeon surnames served on the jury, the names of which were found by Goins and his team of volunteers. “We had Armstrongs, Millers, Livesays, Burens, and those names on there.” Although the arguments used by Col. Netherland in the defense of the Melungeons has not been found, Goins believes his arguments formed the basis of the defense used more than a quarter century later by Lewis Shepherd in the “Celebrated Melungeon Case” in Hamilton County. In that case, Shepherd established that the daughter of a Melungeon woman and a white man was legitimate (despite Tennessee’s miscegenation laws) because the Melungeons had descended from ancient Carthaginians who migrated to America via Portugal. Goins hasn’t given up on finding records of Netherland’s arguments. “That’s what I’d love to find – and we may do it yet! We’ve got a long way to go, and we may find it when we get into [the chancery court records].” Although this court case effectively established the right of Melungeons to vote, Goins said that existing records showed that few Melungeons exercised that right in the following years. This may be due to a fear that another jury might find differently. However, Goins finds that Melungeons were not treated in the same manner as whiter citizens. “I don’t think they were accepted like we thought they were. You’ve heard all these stories that they were allowed to do all these things. I just don’t think they were.” Legal precedents aside, the Melungeons apparently suffered a large degree of discrimination for many years to come. |
The Truth Behind Melungeon Counterfeiting
| For generations, folklore held that many Melungeons were well known for counterfeiting. The story goes that their counterfeit coins actually contained more precious metal than those issued by the government, so were eagerly accepted by local merchants. Modern researchers have largely discounted these stories as legend, but Goins has discovered actual cases of counterfeiting in Hawkins County court records from the late 1820s or early 1830s. “One of them was a Collins, and one of them was a Gibson,” he recalls. “But you wouldn’t believe the money! It looked real!” However, the counterfeit money was not coins, but banknotes. Since government banknotes were not issued until the Civil war, these notes were copies of banknotes issued by the Bank of Virginia. Goins isn’t certain how they were caught, but “they got ‘em with the goods!” |
The Project Continues
| Goins and the Friends of the Hawkins County Archives Project expect to continue working for at least two more years preserving and indexing records. Their efforts have already provided a fascinating portrait of life on the early American frontier, and have shed light on the early history of the Melungeons. Though they have received a state grant and will receive assistance from the state and from the Mormons in microfilming these records, the actual cleaning, preservation, and storage of the original documents will take considerable time -- and money. Contributions can be made to: Friends of Hawkins County Archival Project 955 East McKinney Ave. Rogersville, Tennessee 37857 For more information, you can visit Jack Goins website at http://www.jgoins.com |
