Melungeons Ways Are Passing
News-Sentinel Staff Writer
Sneedville, Tenn
By Willard Yarbrough,
April 26, 1972
Spring air was nippy along
Blackwater Creek in Vardy Valley. So chilly, in fact, that Howard
Mullins lifted his hands with palms exposed to coal fed flames of the
open fire. Such delicate hands, calloused from field work and 110
winters spent in isolated hill country where necessities of life long
since have become luxuries to a mysterious people to whom Mullins
belongs. He is one of the last of the Melungeons, oldest of them all in
Hancock County, which has been home to the Melungeons for 200 years.
Those left in Snake Hollow,
Blackwater, Vardy and Mulberry - are few in number, Most have left the
hills for jobs in cities far and near. And time is catching up with
those remaining. In 1931 there were 40 Melungeon families living on
Newman's Ridge above their ancestral home. Today, only two families
remain on the steep ridges. Genealogist William P. Grohse Sr., who
lives near Mullins, estimates there may be under 200 families left in
the country.
Link to Jews Seen
Melungeon youth, just as
others, are leaving rural America for jobs in towns and cities.
Hancock's population of 12,000 in 1900 dropped to 6719 by 1970,
according to the U. S. Census. Scholars and anthropologists and the
just plain curious come into these hills in ever increasing numbers.
They want to see and talk with hill people with such Melungeon family
names as "Mullins, Collins, Goins, Gibbons, Miser, Bowlin and Bell. A
young Israeli scholar came the other day and became convinced that
these lovely olive-skinned people had Jewish ancestry and fled ages ago
to escape persecution at home. He cited two things he said linked
Melungeons with ancient Jews: Christianity - with the ever-present
Cross - and the name Vardy. Meaning Uncertain "Vardy", he told
chronicler Grohse, "stems from an Israeli word that means rose. So
vardyman means 'man of roses'." Vardy Collins, born in 1766, was the
first Melungeon to settle on the Blackwater. Grohse says he came around
1780 or a little later. His real name was Navarrh, but visitors to his
mineral springs and hotel knew him by the shorter name, Vardy.
Melungeon - what does it
mean?
The Melungeons themselves,
God knows, don't refer to themselves as Melungeons. They don't know
where the name came from, whether from the French word "melange"
(mixture), the Afro-Portuguese "melungo" (shipmate) , or the Greek
"melan" (black). Back at Howard Mullins' open fire, Mrs. Mullins, who
is 72, said she never heard the word until five years ago when she read
a book about "Melungeons." These hill people, now intermixed with
non-Melungeon mates, simply know it's a bad word which their white
neighbors once used to frighten their children: "Better be good or the
Melungeons will get you!"
Accustomed to Hard Times
Melungeons have been angered
for almost two centuries about two things: Strangers who call them by
that name, so the Melungeons think, allude to "mixture" as having Negro
blood. And writers of sensational Melungeon stories at times have
ridiculed a sensitive, peaceful people. Back in 1840 there was an open
insult to the Melungeon name in the state Legislature. "A West
Tennessee Democrat," said Grohse, "argued with an East Tennessee
Republican. The Democrat became so exasperated that he told the
legislators 'Don't pay any attention to him; he's one of them East
Tennessee Melungeons!'" One thing is certain. Melungeons are used to
hard times and privation.
Mrs. Howard Mullins
remembered the Depression days when she obtained a WPA job at the
courthouse here as charwoman. "I walked eight miles across Newman's
Ridge to Sneedville every day", she said. "I'd leave before daylight,
work all day, and walk home after dark - with my dress tail likely as
not frozen stiff where it touched the snow. And you know what I got for
my first week's work? A check for $2.40!"
Still Was Guarded
Old-timers remember worse
times, but they consider they were fortunate even then. Melungeon men
and women many, many years ago worked all day in a farmer's fields just
for the food they ate lunch. Melungeons always have been excellent
moonshiners, though this is mostly in the past. Mrs. Mullins remembers
when she and her first husband lived next door to Howard Mullins, who
she later married. "Howard would fire up his still and I'd build up my
fire under my washpot, so anybody going along the road would think I
was washing. Neighbors helped each other. I guess I'd wash three or
four times a week, or pretend to, and hang my clothes on the line to
hid Howard's still from sight."
Quit Drinking at 90
How has Grandpap Mullins
lived to be 110? "He was drunk most of his life," she said. "That might
have helped preserve him. He quit drinking 20 years ago, but there were
many times I'd have to take the mule and sled and find him passed out
drunk up a hollow. "We both chew tobacco. I do because I don't want to
smell his breath," she said, pointing to her now blind husband as he
chewed Beechnut as if it were chewing gum. "He chews two packs a day."
Mullins hasn't been out of Vardy for more than a year, his last venture
being to Sneedville. He hasn't seen a doctor in years, either, and used
only aspirin for medicine. Mullins lost his father at age 8. The father
and another Melungeon argued at the Mullins moonshine still, Elbert
Mullins losing the argument.
Howard Mullins, who has been
chewing tobacco for 101 years, is the oldest child in his family. His
mother was married three times. Howard's son, Burkett, 78, visits at
times. Mrs. Mullins, who was a Collins, said she was born in a log
house on the Ridge, that food was prepared on a dirt floor "because we
had no money to buy lumber" and that the cabin had only one half-window
for natural light.
Times Easier Now
Melungeons love to talk about
hard times, because they're not so hard today. all homes I visited here
recently had electricity and telephone. The Collinses, Mullinses and
Mizers, along with the the others, find life easier on the valley
floor. Their abandoned log cabins are along the creek banks or on the
ridges, often the object of collectors. Painted houses either are
rented or owned now, being taken over by the melungeons as others quit
the Blackwater. Stone chimneys often are the only reminder of Melungeon
life; some houses are gone.
Melungeons don't make gold
coins any more, either. They used to mint them on the Ridge, take them
into Sneedville to buy provisions - but they never said where they got
the gold. Merchants welcomed the coins because they contained more pure
gold than those from the U. S. Mint. Sneedville stores still buy
ginseng or "sang from Melungeons who dug the roots for shipment to the
Orient. Melungeons, such as Tilmon Hunt, in his 80s, love to hunt, and
they eat what they bag. Tilmon displayed a fox squirrel he felled after
an all-day hunt with his dog in the hills. And once Tilmon walked all
the way home from Norton, Va., where he had a "paying job" years ago.
Age in Doubt
They'll really never know,
these vanishing Americans, their true origin. Some aren't sure of their
ages, either. Grohse, a German who settled in Vardy because he married
the great-great-great- granddaughter of Vardy Collins, said the 1880
Census listed Howard Collins' age at that time as 7. if so, that would
make him only 99 and not 10, the birthday being 1873. But Mullins says
he is 110. Grohse likes to believe the Melungeons were of Portuguese or
Spanish ancestry. And 1850 document shows Vardy Collins, then 86 owned
$1500 worth of real estate and that his wife's name was Peggy. Rev.
Arthur H. Taylor, a Presbyterian missionary here in 1916 and a Grohse
relative, reported he had learned that Vardy Collins' wife was known as
"Spanish Peggy".
Came From East Coast
Miss Martha Collins, a
descendant of Vardy, and president of Citizens Bank of Sneedville,
leans to the Phoenician theory - that these ancient mariners were lost
from ships in the Mediterranean during a storm, and ended up on
American shores. Monroe Collins, a tenant farmer at the foot of Bunches
Trace near Treadway, doesn't gave a hoot about his people's origin.
He'd rather pour water into groundhot holes along the creek, flushing
his quarry, and convert the animal either into stew for dinner or a pet
on a leash in his yard.
Mrs. Mattie Collins, 98, who
lives across a creek reached by footbridge just outside Sneedville,
knows only "my people came from across the waters." Sheriff Gene
Collins says he isn't a Melungeon, that he has Cherokee Indian
ancestry.
Scholars over the decades,
and even more recently, seem rather convinced that Melungeons sprang
from Mediterranean people. Some believe they were Moors, such as
Shakespeare's Othello, fleeing the wars via the sea and settling in
Portugal.
Had Land Grants
All agree that these
olive-skinned people - comprised of beautiful women, fine-featured and
erect males, and lovely children - migrated here from the East Coast,
whether their beginning was from shipwreck following mutiny, survivors
of the Lost Colony of Roanoke, remnants of Hernando DeSoto's expedition
in East Tennessee, or the very last of the Lost Tribes of Israel. They
agree, too, that most came via North and South Carolina, in advance of
the white man, many settling here with land grants following the
Revolutionary War and given out by Tennessee, Virginia and North
Carolina.
Hancock County was in each of
these states before final boundaries were drawn. The Melungeons,
however, like many an American tradition, are passing, just as are some
of their own traditions. Graveposts are disappearing from the
cemeteries. Standing on Newman's Ridge and looking northward, Melungeon
country is breath takeingly beautiful. This is so whether one looks to
the left at the green valley of Little Sycamore or Snake Hollow,
directly ahead toward Mulberry Gap, or to the right and the valley of
the Blackwater and Vardy.
English names merely add to
the mysterious legends of these hill people. One hill saying is that if
a Mullins marries a Collins, their off spring is a Gibson. The
Melungeons aren't so reticent anymore, or skeptical of strangers, and
this is largely so because of Kermit Hunter's outdoor drama that's
shown here each summer beginning July 4. "The Melungeon Story: Walk
Toward the Sunset" is staged at the base of Newmans's Ridge in
Sneedville. It depicts their travail and discrimination against them,
from the time John Sevier found them in 1784. It tells how racial bars
were broken with the marriage of a Sneedville white to a beautiful
Melungeon lass.
These "people of free color"
finally were permitted by the Legislature to vote! And famed author
Jesse Stuart tells in his book, "Daughter of a Legend", how he dated a
Melungeon when he was a student at LMU. Even today, however, Melungeons
are lampooned. A recent magazine article said the drama was concocted
to bilk money from tourists at a Melungeon trap that featured no
Melungeons. How sad! Melungeons built the outdoor theater, helped stage
the play, and performed in it. And Hancock Countians gave money and
labor, signed notes for operating capital, and lost money in efforts to
preserve the Melungeon culture and tradition.