Virginia recently celebrated a milestone anniversary. Four hundred years ago on July 30, the body that became the Virginia House of Delegates first met at Jamestown. In the case of Jamestown, we can ...

A find in the 1860 census catches a reader by surprise, and points to a possible heritage that is subject to debate. I have been asked many times, “What are you?” My response was always, “My mother’s ...

Switching gears now to a story from the Appalachian Mountains of Tennessee, home to a population of mixed race people called the Melungeons. That's a term that, decades ago, used to be a derogatory ...

Appalachian people who endure from mysterious heritage will be the topic of a two-day conference June 26-27 at Warren Wilson College in Swannanoa, North Carolina, as the Melungeon Heritage Association ...

Fred Eiler is a good friend who is passionate about several things, one of which is the Peak Cemetery, located in Gamble Valley’s Scarboro Community, where potentially two Revolutionary Soldiers are ...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — For years, varied and sometimes wild claims have been made about the origins of a group of dark-skinned Appalachian residents once known derisively as the Melungeons. Some ...

I am a mongrel. I’ve got straight black hair and a reddish moustache. I introduce this personal note to open my review of Lisa Alther’s book, “Kinfolks: Falling off the Family Tree - The Search for My ...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) – For years, varied and sometimes wild claims have been made about the origins of a group of dark-skinned Appalachian residents once known derisively as the Melungeons. Some ...

BIG STONE GAP, Va. — Mountain Empire Community College will serve as a center for the collection of Melungeon research, college officials announced Monday. Many people of mixed ethnic background who ...

KINGSPORT (Tennessee) July 1: Might the Melungeon people of the US Appalachian mountains be descendants of Moorish and Turkish sailors who escaped the Lost Colony of Roanoke? Or are their ancestors ...

Ask 10 Melungeons about their ethnic identity and you'll likely get 10 different answers. Even though historians have concluded that Melungeons, a sub-population of southern Appalachia, are a ...

HISTORY MYSTERY: In Lisa Wingate's new novel The Sea Keeper’s Daughters (her 25th book in 14 years), the mixed-race Melungeon people of the Appalachian mountains and a group of oral history gathers, ...