What's everyones opinions on Melungeon families?
Please remove or give me all of the hostility if this is disrespectful. I am in no way apart of any culture and neither is my family. Rather we can trace some of our family roots to the isolated communities in the Applachians of mixed Europeans, freed slaves, and various tribes from the south eastern United States. That being said, none of our ancestors were ever on any of the rolls that I can find as those communities date back to the 1700s.
Melungeon communities formed in the 1600/1700s from families of mixed freed slave, Indigenous, and European descent moving west into the mountains to avoid racially restrictive laws and forced removal. The communities/families stayed very tight knit and on paper they all became "white" allowing them own property, vote, etc. Those communities stayed, flourished, and grew.
For my family we had the most connection with the Occanachee-Saponi tribe just north of Orange, North Carolina. Anyone else have any connections to these families? What are your thoughts on them and their history?