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Archiver > Melungeon > 2004-02 > 1076296334
From:
Subject: Re: [Melungeon] re What fers
Date: Sun, 8 Feb 2004 22:12:18 EST
In a message dated 2/8/2004 10:03:47 PM Eastern Standard Time,
writes:
> Certain "serious" researchers apparently feel threatened if they can't
> browbeat people into silence
I don't need to browbeat anyone into silence Tim. I notice you never
responded to my post on your 'Faulty Conclusion' did you feel I was browbeating you
or did you simply not have an answer?
> >> From:
>> Subject: [Melungeon] Tims Conclusion-Curtis
Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2004 16:33:11 EST
Curtis,
You wrote;
"He sifted ALL the old ideas and then only the ones that could be verified
were kept, and the ones that could not were not. "
--->After reading the 150 page OPINION piece the only thing I found that has
not been debated on this list over and over and over was that " British
researchers have lately sought to prove that King Arthur's Holy Grail is buried in
a Melungeon cave in Kentucky, placed there Arthur's relatives."
Tim's Conclusion:
"Melungeons apparently were first noted by that name in present-day Scott
County, Virginia. The claim that Hancock County, Tennessee was the birthplace
of the Melungeons is obscured by the deliberate attempt in 1846-48 to conceal
the black/Indian component in Hancock County Melungeons; a myth later
perpetuated by Dromgoole and others."
--->The opinion that he presented was based on a transcription of a church
record that no one has 'verified.' Someone was 'harboring a Melungin' but can
Tim prove they were not harboring JAMES MELUGIN or his brothers, whose names
sometimes appeared in records as MELUNGIN? It clearly has not been
'verified' who Kitchen-Stallard were speaking of, faulty evidence leads to faulty
conclusions.
Tim's Conclusion:
"The anonymous writer in 1848 was incorrect when he wrote that Portuguese
people left the coast and came to Hancock County to marry Indians and blacks.
That Portuguese myth had been concocted and introduced at the trial of the
Hancock County 8 to counter the argument that they were 1/2 black or 1/2
Indian. The similar scenarios related by Dromgoole and others are all rooted in
the same myth that had worked for Melungeons in 1848."
---> Tim gives the source for this as Little's Living Age which is quoting a
newspaper which is quoting another newspaper. Does Tim know when this article
first appeared? It is just as likely this article first appeared in 1834
when the radical change in the constitution stripped the free people of color in
Tennessee of their right to vote. . It is also just as likely that Parson
Brownlow read this article in 1834.
This very same article was published in 1898 in an Ohio paper and does not
give any hint it was previously published. If the 1848 article had not been
found we would think this journalist went to Newman's Ridge in 1898. If anyone
has the original newspaper from where and when this article appeared I for one
would like to see it.
Unless, or until, Tim has the date of publication in the Louisville paper
there is no proof the story was concocted at the trial in 1848 and in fact from
Jack's post yesterday the notes imply the argument presented was that they
were Indian. Jack wrote;
"What was the arguments in these Illegal voting trials? I was convinced it
was Portuguese until I received a letter from a Librarian in Nashville, who sent
me the following information. "Jack, We are using transcripts from the notes
of T.R. Nelson when he defended a case in Johnson County in 1858, while
reading the report of a Tennessee Supreme Court case involving race, I found the
following - " Has also understood that one of the same family, named Minor, and
several others have since got their freedom on the plea of their being
descended from an Indian ancestor."
Faulty evidence leads to faulty conclusions.
As to Parson Brownlow and his "half negro/ half Indian democrat" it seems
Brownlow was in the habit of calling people 'half negro.' President Abraham
Lincoln is rumored to have had negro ancestry, some on this list claim he was
Melungeon. Parson Brownlow was accused of calling President Lincoln 'half negro'
to which Brownlow's son replied that 'his father certainly never said that
Lincoln was half negro, for Parson Brownlow had long held a high respect for
Lincoln.' He went on to add his father actually had called Vice President Hamlin a
half negro. Didn't matter if Lincoln was or not, apparently he only called
people he had no respect for 'half negro.'
This proves nothing, it verifies nothing. Parson Brownlow and his newspaper
was a joke, but that's another story.
You can respond to this if you want but I have no intention of debating this,
check the archives and you will find everything Tim wrote has been debated
many times. If however they find the Holy Grail I would like to hear that one.
Joanne Pezzullo
"self-taught family genealogist"
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