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Archiver > Melungeon > 2004-05 > 1085591617


From: "Darlene Wilson" <>
Subject: RE: [Melungeon] 2) on John Fox, Jr. and early references to the word Melungeon
Date: Wed, 26 May 2004 13:13:37 -0400
In-Reply-To: <092b01c44344$3d3ecee0$c588fea9@yourqxth6nfroj>


Excellent, Marie. He left several important legacies - I have spent hours
and hours in the diaries and find something new everytime I pick it up...

bye,
dar'e

-----Original Message-----
From: vhowery [mailto:]
Sent: Wednesday, May 26, 2004 1:10 PM
To: Darlene Wilson
Cc:
Subject: Re: [Melungeon] 2) on John Fox, Jr. and early references to the
word Melungeon


Darlene, so you know E O Guerrant was a relative of mine from the Guerrant
line from the Manakin Va Huguenots... Just thought you would like to know
this...Marie
Marie Worley-Howery
("""")
Up to my neck ( ^(^) in Brickwalls
------------------\ O /---------------------
HELP!







----- Original Message -----
From: "Darlene Wilson" <>
To: <>
Sent: Wednesday, May 26, 2004 11:57 AM
Subject: [Melungeon] 2) on John Fox, Jr. and early references to the word
Melungeon


> Re: John Fox. Jr. - this will take some time to respond to... I will try
to
> sum it up best I can. I'm going to split Fox into two e-mails broadly
> relating to two periods - pre-1882 and after. Hopefully my reasons for
doing
> so will be obvious but, if not, I'll try to clarify later.
>
> John Fox Jr. (famous Kentucky novelist, b.1861, d.1919) probably first
heard
> the label Melungeon from his father's close friend E. O Guerrant who was a
> central-Kentuckian who joined the Confederate Army and served primarily in
> sw Virginia and eastern KY as a secretary to a series of commanding
> generals. Guerrant is well-known in eastern Kentucky for his later
> missionary efforts and a series of church congregations and schools that
he
> helped to establish. For our purposes here, though, his initial
> contributions are in references to Melungeons he encountered during the
war
> years which are noted in his private diaries.
>
> An edited version of his war-year diaries was published a couple of years
> ago:
> _Bluegrass Confederate: The Headquarters Diary of Edward O. Guerrant_
> by William C. Davis (Editor), Meredith L. Swentor (Editor), Edward O.
> Guerrant
> Publisher: Louisiana State University Press; (November 1999)
> ISBN: 0807124117
>
> (A Google search for "E.O. Guerrant" produces a considerable number of
hits
> so I would encourage anyone who gets intriqued by anything I say here to
> begin their own research into this fascinating man.)
>
> I don't have my copy of Guerrant's edited diaries right at hand (it's a
very
> thick and heavy book and I keep it on reserve at the college's library for
> my students in HIS 240 - Hist of KY) but, about midway through the book,
the
> first reference is made to his having met Melungeons in his travels
between
> 1862-64 in sw VA -- he defined the label in concretized language as
> "half-negro and half-white." No theoretical ambiguity on Guerrant's
part -
> he made said definition with conviction and as a "qualified" observant and
> chronicler (we can debate the definition of "qualified" until the cows
come
> home but let's not now, ok?). During this period, he was not in or around
> Hancock County, in fact, he hadn't been in Tennessee at all - his
'service'
> to the Confederates up until then had been from his post in Gladeville
(now
> Wise), Virginia where General Montgomery's command was charged with
> maintaining Confederate control of Pound Gap (from Wise Co. to now-Letcher
> Co., KY), gaps in the Black Mtn. (between Wise Co. and Harlan County), and
> occasionally down to the Cumberland Gap. As I recall (but cannot prove
at
> the moment without having the book at hand), the reference to Melungeons
> comes about the time that Montgomery was removed from his command and
> Guerrant and his other soldiers were re-assigned to a command stationed
> closer to Abingdon from whence he/they become more involved in protecting
> Confederate access to salt and salt-petre resources around Glade Spring,
> Marion, Saltville, etc..
>
> Guerrant's diaries are considered to be of minimal use by military
> historians who are mainly concerned with battlefield strategy or combat
> zones. It is highly regarded, though, by social historians - Guerrant is
> downright elegant in his descriptions of the socio-economic landscapes of
> eastern Kentucky and Southwest Virginia - he is curious and writes
> extensively about the people, their lifestyles, and their racial
attitudes.
> For example, he describes 'skirmishes' in Eastern Kentucky, especially
> around Harlan Courthouse, with small bands of Union guerrillas who
> considered themselves 'home guards' - Guerrant was particularly struck by
> the mixed-race composition of these bands - lots of white men and
> men-of-color riding together as comrades - not something that the
> Confederacy - either 'official' or in 'renegade bands' - would have
condoned
> or abided.
>
> Okay, now back to Fox - first the "facts" as I know them. There is a
> impressively large collection of "Fox Family papers" in the historical
> archives at the University of Kentucky - I have about two-thirds of it
> photocopied and filed here at home but could not photocopy all of the
> diaries / notebooks due to their fragility. I took digital images of many
> of these, though, but these aren't as easy to read as the couple of
thousand
> pages of letters and scrapbook pages that I DO have copies of. Here's
what
> I know from ten years of study of those papers and can 'prove' as factual:
>
> >From the mid-1850s until 1890 (when he took his family to live in Big
Stone
> Gap, Va), Fox's father, John Senior, was an itinerant schoolmaster, going
to
> live - with his first wife and three children and, then, after her death,
> with his second wife and eventual brood of ten children - in whatever
> central or northern Kentucky community where there were enough white male
> civic leaders who would promise their sons as students sufficient to
> guarantee Fox a monthly stipend. Guerrant and Senior had been classmates
in
> Harrodsburg, KY, before the war. By the late 1860s, the Fox clan had
pretty
> well settled in or around Paris, (Bourbon County) Kentucky. It is during
> this period that Guerrant begins to appear as a regular visitor to the Fox
> home as he began to earnestly pursue his missionary efforts to eastern
> Kentucky and traveled regularly back and forth through the state. My notes
> are that he visited Fox Senior and his family a couple of times a year at
> the least, he stayed for various lengths of time depending on the season -
> from one night to four-or-five typically. As a young boy, then, John
Junior
> sat for many hours listening to Guerrant talk to Senior about his
encounters
> with mountain folk. These visits are recorded nightly by Senior in his
own
> daily journal (also by Guerrant but never mind that now) - the topics of
> nightly discussion are noted as are references to which of his ten
children
> were at hand during these visits. There are abt. fifty-five same-size
(and
> almost identical in design) diaries attributed to John Senior in the
> archives at UKy - I've read them all and made cross-referenced notes to a
> widening range of veins-of-inquiry (such as how often Johnny was at-home
> after they relocated to BSG, VA - it turns out that he was very rarely in
> the mountains between 1890 and 1910 but that too is a diversion that I
won't
> get into now). The only diary that isn't at UKy is on a table-display at
> the Fox Family home in Big Stone Gap (Helen provided a link to their
website
> in an earlier post). On a visit to the BSG landmark, I was 'expelled'
from
> the house for waiting until everyone's back was turned and grabbing that
> diary from its position to read as much as I could of it before getting
> caught. (I'm pretty well banned from there forever now since I wrote of
> Johnny's "prostate" and manhood issues in my introduction to the 1996
> re-issue of Fox's last novel _Heart of the Hills_ by the University of
> Kentucky - but alas! that too is another diversion for which there isn't
> room here.)
>
> Later John Junior (or "Johnny" as he was called by his family until his
> death in 1919 so I call him Johnny too in my published work and in my
> dissertation) wrote of his boyish imagination being challenged by
Guerrant's
> wartime experiences and 'adventures' in the wild mountains of eastern KY
and
> southwest Virginia. Johnny would not himself venture into the
> deep-mountains until his second summer visit to KY from his studies at
> Harvard in 1882 (he was at Harvard on a scholarship from the Garth Fund
for
> Poor Boys of Bourbon County - still another diversion - no wonder I can't
> lecture coherently - like Brent, I tend to want to digress!!!). By 1882,
> his eldest brother James had gotten involved in a superintendent-capacity
> with a group of KY/TN financial backers who were opening mines and laying
> rail-track to new mine openings near Jellico, TN - Johnny went there with
> his two younger brothers that summer of '82 to work for James. In his
> writings from this summer - either in letters or in subsequent 'fiction' -
> Johnny doesn't mention the word Melungeon at all but after returning to
> Harvard in the fall, he wrote to warn his younger brothers against
pursuing
> his mock-courtship with a local girl who he described as the beautiful,
> spirited, and sexy "black-eyed Mary Smith" who was, like others of her
kind,
> representative of (direct quote here) "a dark and prolific race" - he
> specifically wrote to his younger brothers that a longterm relationship
with
> Smith and/or her female cousins would "bring you no advantage socially due
> to their exotic appearance." In short, their beauty and sexual
> desireability made them okay for Fox and his bros to engage in 'sparking'
> and 'stealing some physical favors' but they were off-limits for marriage
> because they were obviously less-than-white.
>
> Okay - I'm going to break here - more to come on Fox's personal encounters
> with Melungeons in the next e-mail. Before I get into that, however, let
me
> differentiate between what I know to be "fact" from the above viz-a-viz
what
> I can and have theorized from it.
>
> a) in the mid-1860s, the label "Melungeon" (in various spellings) is,
> relatively-speaking, common-usage in southwest Virginia and eastern
> Kentucky - Guerrant gives us that.
>
> b) by 1882, in upper east Tennessee, the term Melungeon is not in common
> usage but the Jim Crow mentality is obviously alive and well around
Jellico.
> Fox's many letters leave us (or me) without any doubt on this point --
this
> was one outstanding example of a 19th-century letter-writing family - and
I
> would urge anyone with access to UKy to delve into this wonderful archival
> resource.
>
> Fox is, in 1882, about to embark on a literary and lecture career that can
> best be described as a "white-tie minstrel act" in which Fox depicts and
> caricatures mountain folk. More importantly, I think, is that by 1882 Fox
> is also hardening intellectually into white supremacist attitudes which
will
> "color" both his personal reactions to social classes and castes and his
> later writings - both allegedly "fact" and "fiction."
>
> More on this in the next message but just let me offer three citations for
> anyone who wants to read further about my use of the "facts" and the
> "theories and queries" that must, I think, be posed about those facts
(this
> is especially for you, Pat! - if you don't have access to any of these,
> please let me know)...
>
> 1) my introduction to _Heart of the Hills_ cited above (original
publication
> 1912, re-issued 1996, University Press of Kentucky);
>
> 2) Wilson, "The Felicitous Convergence of Mythmaking and Capital
> Accumulation: John Fox Jr. and the Formation of (An)Other Almost-White
> American Underclass," in _Journal of Appalachian Studies_, Fall 1995, v.
1.
> n. 1 (old journal, official publication of the Appalachian Studies
> Association - my essay there was voted best of ASA's 1995 Conference and
was
> chosen to lead off the new imprint / cover of the Journal upon its
> relocation to West Virginia University in the same year).
>
> Please note that the weird sub-title of my essay is my tongue-in-cheek
> acknowledgment of the postmodernist / deconstructionist 'teaching' that I
> was receiving at the time as a graduate student - the main thrust of which
> is, as Pat suggested in one of her posts of yesterday, that "truth" is
> elusive and always, already subjective - competing "truths" are in
> abundance. What I was trained to do is, using James Scott's excellent
> phrase, examine all the "hidden transcripts" that co-exist with the
> "documents" - Scott's main work as an anthropologist focuses on the gaps
> between the "official transcripts" of the British government and the
"hidden
> transcripts" that were extant among the natives of India during the period
> that they were colonized by the British. Other examples of Scott's
> influence on history and anthropology are abundant - especially in fields
> relating to post-colonial studies. In the spirit of Helen Lewis, John
> Gaventa, and other 'heroes' of Appalachian Studies, I use Scott's
> terminology and other samplings of post-colonial 'reasonings' and
> 'theorizing' in my approach to Appalachian history.
>
> 3) Wilson, " 'A Judicious Combination of Incident and Psychology': John
Fox
> Jr. and the Southern Mountaineer Motif," in _Confronting Appalachian
> Streotypes: Back Talk From An American Region_, Dwight Billings, Gurney
Norm
> an, and Katherine Ledford, editors; 1999, University Press of Kentucky.
> This book was re-packaged in paperback form and renamed: _ Back Talk from
> Appalachia: Confronting Stereotypes_, same editors; University Press of
> Kentucky; January 2001. The hardback is nice but the paperback is very
> accessible at only $13 or so new, priced for use with students in
> Appalachian Studies courses.
>
> In this essay, please notice that the first half of the title is enclosed
in
> its own quotation mark indicating that it is a direct quote. I found it
in
> a congratulatory letter to Fox written in 1895 by Owen Wister, author of
> _The Virginian_; Wister was grateful to his good friend Theodore Roosevelt
> who had urged him to read Fox's novellette, "A Cumberland Vendetta" which
> was serialized in a national magazine that year. In this hastily
scribbled
> note, Wister commented favorably on Fox's writing and predicted that Fox's
> legacy would prove to be "a judicious combination of incident and
> psychology." How prophetic!
>
> bye,
> darlene
> AKA The Webspinning Granny
> and agent provacateur
>
>
>
>
> ==== Melungeon Mailing List ====
> The MELUNGEON LIST HOMEPAGE:
> http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~mtnties/melungeon.html

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