He had heard
his father use the word
“Melungeons.” His father had come from old “James county,” now a
part of Hamilton–they were from Rhea county orginally, or perhaps
McMinn. The tradition was that the Goins family had come to
Tennessee from Virginia–but of that he was not
sure.
Shown here at
the helm of his ferry
boat near the Marion County bridge is Arthur Goins, of Hales Bar,
a
descendent of the Melungeons, a distinctive group known to have been in
this section when John Sevier founded the state of Franklin. The
late Judge Lewis Shepherd once argued that the Melungeons came to
American from Phoenicia when Carthage fell to the Romans. The Goins
family are “Melungeons” so say all the old residents–one has to be an
old resident even to know the queer word–its meaning is lost in modern
parlance–even Arthur Goins recalls only that he had heard his father
use it. And yet, to look backward in Tennessee history and
perhaps far backward beyond the state’s original settlement, the word
was once widely used. Perhaps the small, swarthy man has the
right to appear as a navigator–perhaps the proud race from which he
sprang came to this country even prior to Columbus.