WHAT DID THE SCOTS-IRISH AND THE MELUNGEONS HAVE IN COMMON?

What did the Scots-Irish and the Melungeons have in common? Two groups who ended up in the same Appalachian mountains, carrying the same surnames, and were sorted into two different Americas — one into a proud ethnic identity, the other into a registrar's file of families to be reclassified. Neither group chose its own name. Both names started as insults. THE MAN WHO WAS THREE RACES. Vardy Collins, born around 1764, was recorded as white in the 1790 census in Wilkes County, North Carolina, then as a free person of color in Ashe County in 1800 and in Hawkins County, Tennessee in 1830. Same man. When his descendants were tested two centuries later, his paternal line came back European. "SCOTCH IRISH" BEGAN AS AN INSULT. On 15 March 1689 in Somerset County, Maryland, William Pattent swore out an affidavit recording what was said to him before he was struck: "You Scotch Irish dogg… it was no more sin to kill me then to kill a dogg." That is the oldest known use of the phrase in America. By 1723 settlers were using it of themselves, and by 1889 the Scotch-Irish Society of America had turned it into a proud identity. THEY DID NOT TRAVEL THE SAME ROADS. Ulster families landed at Philadelphia and New Castle and came south down the Great Wagon Road. The Melungeon families came out of the Virginia Tidewater through the Carolina Piedmont, arriving from the east. The routes converged — Orange County in the 1750s, the New River, the Holston and Clinch in the 1790s — but were never the same road. THE SURNAMES ARE IDENTICAL, AND IT IS NOT ANCESTRY. Collins, Gibson, Bunch, Minor, Mullins, Williams, Moore, Bell. Paul Heinegg counted 444 free families of color in Virginia and North Carolina descended from white servant women. Virginia's 1662 law made a child free or enslaved by the condition of the mother, so a white servant woman's child by an African man was born free, and took her English or Scottish surname. WHAT ACTUALLY SEPARATED THEM. Virginia law made free women of color taxable and white women not, so from the 1720s every county kept a written record of which families were which — by tax liability, not appearance. Tennessee's 1834 constitution took the vote from free men of color, and in 1846 the state prosecuted men from Newman's Ridge for voting. The legal historian Ariela Gross found courts decided race by reputation and record — did the family attend the white church, muster, vote, testify. A man whose grandfather had the right paperwork was white. HONEST FRAMING The 2011 study of the Melungeon core families found twelve European ancestral lineages, eight sub-Saharan African and one Native American, every maternal line tested European. Shepherd Gibson's paternal line carries a lineage common across Ireland, Scotland and Wales — but it cannot distinguish Ulster from Devon, and nobody has traced a Melungeon line to Ulster. The 2017 study of 770,000 American genomes found no Scots-Irish cluster, though it was not looking for one. CHAPTERS 0:00 — A man who was three different races in forty years 0:43 — 1690: the first time anyone wrote "Scotch Irish" 1:54 — Somebody had to decide who was white 2:25 — The Ulster migration, and where it landed 4:08 — The other migration nobody has heard of 5:04 — Two completely different roads 5:43 — Where the two streams finally met 7:19 — The surnames are identical. Here is why. 7:59 — The 1662 law that created those names 8:40 — What the testing actually found 10:25 — 770,000 genomes, and no Scots-Irish cluster 11:41 — The tax that recorded who was what 12:35 — Families changing race in ten years 13:00 — How courts actually decided race 15:15 — Two naming projects, opposite directions 17:30 — How to check your own family TELL ME WHAT YOU FIND Does your family claim Scots-Irish ancestry, and can you trace it to Ulster — or does the trail stop in Pennsylvania or Virginia with nobody knowing how it got there? And if you have Collins, Gibson, Goins, Bunch, Minor, Mullins, Bell or Williams in east Tennessee, southwest Virginia or western North Carolina, put the surname and county in the comments. #ScotsIrish #Melungeons #Appalachia #Genealogy #AmericanHistory #FamilyHistory #AmericanBloodlines Scots-Irish Americans history, Scotch-Irish origin of the term, Melungeon surnames Appalachia, 1662 Virginia law condition of the mother, Appalachian family history, how America classified race