Melungeon-L Archives

Archiver > Melungeon > 2003-03 > 1047839653


From: "Pat Elder" <>
Subject: RE: [Melungeon] African ancestry question
Date: Sun, 16 Mar 2003 13:34:13 -0500
In-Reply-To: <003501c2ebe7$3a80fda0$799a6444@endxokep>


>Personally, I very much doubt it was just one woman, but Dr. Jones should
be
>able to tell us that in his published paper. They were tri-racial because
>their descendents carry white, black, and Indian DNA, along with the
>Siddi/Turkis/Syrian DNA, however you want to characterize that.


The above is true only if one agrees with the definition of Melungeon used
to set up the test. Someone needs to tell us those standards and how
participants proved they met those standards. That aside, we don't know if
it was a male or female who started the ball rolling on being a Melungeon.


>Well, based on the preliminary results, we know they were white, black,
>Indian, Siddi, Turkish and Syrian. It is possible that Dr. Jones' analysis
>will show that the Hancock County samples differ from the Southwest
Virginia
>samples -- making such a comparison was one of the aims of the study.


We really do need to know the ancestor these each of these folks are
claiming was their Melungeon ancestor and be shown how that ancestor can be
accepted universally as having been a historical Melungeon.

Until we know when "Melungeoness" entered the picture, we still won't know
what it means about Melungeons no matter how precisely the testing process
was conducted. I am going to use Jack Goins as an example simply because he
will not care if do that. If his Goinses are the family used to test for
data on his Melungeoness, how do we know when that Goins line became
Melungeon? Perhaps it was when his 16th-great-grandmother married Mr.
Unknown Goins, in which case Jack's Y-chromosomal DNA test won't tell much.
If Jack's mtDNA was tested, the sample tested wasn't Melungeon to begin with
even by Jack's definition since his mother was not a Melungeon and isn't
known to have Melungeon ancestry. His definition differs from mine on a few
points for what that's worth.

Serious researchers must insist that these problems be ironed out to
satisfaction before the test results can mean anything about Melungeons. If
someone publicly proclaims to be a Melungeon, I have to wonder why they care
if their data and the evidence used to show they are Melungeon is made
public since, as far as I know, all participants were advised that they
needed to be "Melungeon."

Pat

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