Cherokee Choctaw & Portuguese

Cherokee Choctaw & Portuguese

The Free Press

27 September  1901, Fri · Page 7

Bridger, Montana 

How White Blood Preponderates in Certain Tribes.

North Carolina Croatans, who claim to be descendant of Raleigh's lost colony[1], are not the only peculiar people among the red inhabitants of these United States.  The claim is not new.  It has been more or less exploited these 30 years, along with that of the more curious Melungeons of East Tennessee. Their name, said to come from the French melange, a mixture, must be pre-eminently fit, since they show racial characteristics of the Cherokees, the Choctaws, the Portuguese [See Below Cherokee Chief Nimrod Smith 2] and the plain ordinary whites.  Their language is as mixed as their blood, and their civilization is in somewhat the same condition.

Over against them set their neighbors, the Eastern Cherokees, who live in Qualla Boundary, in western North Carolina, and are so up-to-date that they formed themselves into a regular corporation, so as to share in the government benefits which were in danger of monopoly by the rich and out-reaching western Cherokee nation. [See Below lawsuit 3]   Right here it may be proper to say that after the outcry against Indian population of today is not so very much less than that which Columbus found here, and the so-called Five Civilized Nations of Indian Territory, have quintrupled in numbers since crossing the Mississippi.

[1] The Crotans did not claim to be 'Lost Colony of Roanoke' Hamilton McMillan who had witnessed the speech of George Lowery in the 1860s  and in McMillan's own words Lowery said in "Sir Walter Raleigh's Lost Colony, with the traditions of An Indian Tribe in North Carolina indicating the fate of the Colony";

ROANOKE IN VIRGINIA 
NOT NORTH CAROLINA
[To Be Continued- Next Blog]

Chief Nimrod J Smith

[2] I said to myself, "This is not a modern face of the every-day world; it does not belong to any race admixture of which I know anything; it might have belonged to a Spanish cavalier of the olden time;"  and as if in answer to my thought came the information that there was an admixture of Portuguese blood in his veins, or to speak in vernacular, he was "part Portygee."

[3]  As principal chief Smith devoted most of his time to the Eastern Cherokee's legal battles. Hoping to gain access to the annuities and other trust funds held by the U.S. government for the Western (Oklahoma) Cherokee, the Eastern Cherokee filed suit in the court of claims against the United States and the Cherokee Nation West in 1883. Two years later the court handed down a decision adverse to the Eastern Cherokee, and the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the decision in 1886. The courts ruled that the Eastern Cherokee had dissolved their connection with the Cherokee Nation by their refusal to move west. The decision deprived them not only of the trust and annuity funds but also of their tribal status and consequently left them in an extremely ambiguous legal position."

https://the-melungeons.blogspot.com/search?q=nimrod+smith

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The next time you read the Melungeon or Croatan/Lumbee families or your family were rejected in the Cherokee applications consider this;  The United States Government ruled the EASTERN CHEROKEE DISSOLVED THEIR CONNECTION TO THE WESTERN CHEROKEE BECAUSE THEY 'DID NOT WALK' 

And it continues today. 

January 19, 2007

TAHLEQUAH, Okla. -
"Every year thousands of people are told or "discover" they have Native American blood. Sometimes it's true, sometimes not. And the tribe people most commonly associate themselves with is Cherokee. A group of Cherokee Nation employees and officials recently formed a task force to deal with these "wannabe" Cherokees."

https://www.cherokeephoenix.org/news/non-recognized-cherokee-tribes-flourish/article_ac02834f-35d3-5bc3-bd2c-ad2b69101baf.html

Chief Nimrod J. Smith

 

 

BOSTON EVENING TRANSCRIPT

FRIDAY AUGUST 4, 1893

FROM CHEROKEE LAND

[Special Correspondence of the Transcript]

Cherokee, N.C. 

.....The men are now duly qualified citizens of the United States, but alas! it is with them as with a large body of voters elsewhere, their chief interest in the matter is in the buying of their votes.  They have their own council and elect their own Chief, and, I think, have a code of laws their own.  Ex Chief Smith is said to be a man of a good deal of intelligence.  He is ill at present, but I have seehn his pictured face, and it is a striking one.  the features are of the finest Caucasian type, the gaze piercing and intelligent, and upon the shoulders hangs a profusion of long and picturesque ringlets.  I said to myself, "This is not a modern face of the every-day world; it does not belong to any race admixture of which I know anything; it might have belonged to a Spanish cavalier of the olden time;"  and as if in answer to my thought came the information that there was an admixture of Portuguese blood in his veins, or to speak in vernacular, he was "part Portygee."  Mine host is inclined to ridicule this idea, and to account for the curly hair on an African basis, but there is not the slightest suggestion of the negro in Smith's face or in the faces of any of his children or grandchildren whom I have seen.  Affiliation between these two races is rare, the negroes and Indians usully holding toward one another the proverbial cat and dog relation

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"As principal chief Smith devoted most of his time to the Eastern Cherokee's legal battles. Hoping to gain access to the annuities and other trust funds held by the U.S. government for the Western (Oklahoma) Cherokee, the Eastern Cherokee filed suit in the court of claims against the United States and the Cherokee Nation West in 1883. Two years later the court handed down a decision adverse to the Eastern Cherokee, and the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the decision in 1886. The courts ruled that the Eastern Cherokee had dissolved their connection with the Cherokee Nation by their refusal to move west. The decision deprived them not only of the trust and annuity funds but also of their tribal status and consequently left them in an extremely ambiguous legal position."

NCPEDIA

Biography

https://www.ncpedia.org/biography/smith-nimrod-jarrett

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See

The wagonauts abroad : two tours in the wild mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina, made by three kegs, four wagonauts and a canteen, in two parts. Nashville, Tenn.: Southwestern Publishing House. 1892 Page 225

https://archive.org/details/wagonautsabroadt00doak/page/224/mode/2up?view=theater
 

Melugeons Wikipedia

MELUNGEONS

COPIED FROM FROM WIKIPEDIA

Written by armchair authors who copy and paste cherry picked data to suit their theories.

For Melungeon Disinformation  - See Wikipedia

"Melungeans, Melungins, Melungeons are a group of people from Appalachia who predominantly descend from Northern or Central European women and sub-Saharan African men."

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This is from the HALF TESTED Melungeons by four authors whose aim was to author, along with Jill Lackey,  books, documentaries etc., on the AFRICAN HERITAGE OF THE MELUNGEONS  when the DNA PROJECT was barely a year old. I, Joanne Pezzullo was co-founder of this project from the beginning, with Jack Goins, Penny Feruguson and Janet Crain.  I was the genealogist of the project, all surnames were researched by me. I quit in 2008-2009 in disgust as the project became 'shady'.  My replacement, Kathy James also quit in disgust. See my review where I show from 2005 to 2012 when the paper was published that barely HALF the surnames listed, according to them, belonged in the project WERE NOT TESTED  and not part of the data release.    

In 2011, Estes, Goins, Ferguson, and Crain founded the Melungeon DNA Project. They reported that the Melungeon lines had likely originated in the unions of black and white indentured servants living in Virginia in the mid-17th century before slavery became widespread in the United States.[10] They concluded that as laws to prevent the mixing of races were put into place, those family groups intermarried with one another creating an endogamous group.

This is the worse part of the Wikipedia article.  Much of Wikipedia is taken from the shoddy DNA study in 2012. 

Jack Goins and Roberta Estes both admitted what was printed in the paper was errouneous - that in fact the results were Half European and Half African.  You cannot take a European man married to a'white indenture servant  and have an African baby. 

Jack Goins blog  (Jack criticizing Joanne 😏  Just threee years after he reported their ancestors were African men and European women:

"Those results plainly show an almost even mixture of European and African males and all the maternal test were European".

https://tinyurl.com/yckyt8kn

Roberta Estes on the 2012 DNA Study

"The AP picked up on the paper and set about to write their own article.  They did a pretty good job, all things considered, except for a typo or two (death years pertaining to photos should have been in the 1900s, not 1800s) and one slight error (the Melungeon male lines who tested were both African and European)"

https://tinyurl.com/yhf4wkb2                   

They promised an update in 2012,  eleven years ago, I have not seen one, have you?

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"Initially, a generalized pejorative racial slur, Melungeon became associated with 40 families living in East Tennessee and Southwest Virginia.[1][2][3] Neighboring Melungeon settlements may have included the Cumberland Gap area of central Appalachia, which includes portions of eastern Kentucky."

This paragraph is absolutely off the charts when it comes to even the slightest bit of research. 

It was not intitially a racial slur, it was given to a group of 50 mixed families living on the Pee Dee River in 1754 most of whom came from Charles City County as Indian traders with mixed families. These families, because of the 'laws in South Carolina left the state, settling in SW Virginia, East Tennessee, Kentucky, while some went south into Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi etc. 
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"Unfounded theories of Melungeon origins that have been disproven include them having Portuguese, Native American, Turkish, or Romani ancestry. They likely made these claims to account for their dark complexion while hiding their African heritage to remain free."

DISPROVEN BY A SHODDY 2012 DNA REPORT the authors have admitted was NOT CORRECT.  I have never seen any document, article, DNA etc., that has disproven Portuguese or Native American ancestry.  In fact it is the opposite.  

Fifty men who descend from one Gibson ancestor of Charles City County who are proven descendants of an Indian woman in a court document carry the Atlantic Modal Haplotype that is found in 90% of the men in some parts of Portugal.  Very little is written on the shipload of Portuguese that came with DeSoto in 1540, or the "Lost Colony" of Lucas DeAyllon in 1527,  or the court cases that decided with the Melungeons they were in fact descended from Portuguese ancestors. 

http://www.khazaria.com/genetics/portuguese.html

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"The earliest historical record of the term Melungeon dates to 1813. In the minutes of the Stoney Creek Baptist Church in Scott County, Virginia, a woman stated another parishioner made the accusation that "she harbored them Melungins."

The search for the original document held by the Boatwater family in the 1960s was hunted down by Jack Goins, ask him if it mentioned the Melungins or the McLungs

Charles and Hugh McClung owned 57,000 acres in Russell/Scott County they were buying up all the land because for the COAL.  They were land grabbers 1812-1813 and the people at that church knew it. 

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"On November 10, 1935, The Nevada State Journal wrote: "Melungeons are a distinct race of people living in the mountains of eastern Tennessee. They are about the color of mulattoes but have straight hair."[8][better source needed]

More opinions 

Solomon's father Spencer Bolton was born on the Pee Dee River in  1735 thus one of the mixed families found there in 1754. His daughter was proved to be of Portuguese descent in Hamilton County Court - upheld in the Supreme Court. He, along with the GOINS PERKINS SHOEMAKE etc remain the only identified Melungeons in a court case. 

Q. What was the color of Solomon Bolton? Was it not that of a mulatto or half breed negro?
A. He was dark skinned.
Q. Was he not darker than a dark skinned white man, and was not the color different to that of a dark skinned white man and did he not look like a mulatto?
A. He was darker than a dark skinned white man, but I never thought his color looked like a mulatto or negro, but thought it looked like Spaniard. I have saw one or two Spaniards in my life time.

Q. State whether or not you know of any of Bolton's family-- his father or other in the state of North Carolina or other place
A. I was in So Carolina once and saw his father. I knew most of his family. I was on business in So Carolina. His father, or a man claiming to be his father came to me to inquire after his son Solomon Bolton whom he said was living in this County
Q. State whether or not the father of Solomon Bolton was regarded and treated as a citizen of South Carolina, or as a colored man? You will also state his church relations-to what church he belonged and how he was received by society, so far as you were able to determine.
A. They told me there that he was a very respectable citizen there. I asked if he was not a colored man and they told me he was not, but was a Portagese. The told me that he was a member of Baptist Church there in good standing and was received in good society. I saw nothing to the contrary.

Goodspeeds HISTORY OF TENNESSEE - 1886 

"A settlement was also made at an early date at Mulberry Gap, where a little village sprang up. Newmans' Ridge, which runs through the county to the north of Sneedville, and parallel with Clinch river, is said to have taken its name from one of the first settlers upon it. It has since been occupied mainly by a people presenting a peculiar admixture of white and Indian blood."

There are HUNDREDS of articles on who, where etc were the Melungeons, what color were they. Read who their neighbors, attorneys, tax men etc had to say, not some 1935 Nevada newspaper. 

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"Racial laws and court cases
Melungeon ancestors were considered by appearance to be mixed race. During the 18th and the early 19th centuries, census enumerators classified them as "mulatto," "other free," or as "free persons of color." Sometimes they were listed as "white" or sometimes as "black" or "negro," but almost never as "Indian".

'Never as "Indian" 

They snuck that 'almost' in there 😃

"An examination of the annual census records from 1860 to 1890 shows the beginnings of the enumeration of Native Americans in the census. Article I, section 2, of the Constitution requires a census to be taken every 10 years so that seats in the House of Representatives can be apportioned among the states. Section 2 excludes "Indians not taxed"—those Indians living on reservations or those roaming in unsettled areas of the country.

The first federal decennial census that clearly identifies any Native Americans is the 1860 census .1 The instructions to the 1860 census enumerators defined who was to be counted and who was not:

Indians not taxed are not to be enumerated. The families of Indians who have renounced tribal rule, and who under state or territory laws exercise the rights of citizens, are to be enumerated.

 In 1890, the Census Bureau made an effort to count all Indians, both taxed and untaxed, and the results were published in extensive monographs focused on the population 

Report on Indians Taxed and Indians Not Taxed in the United States (except. Alaska) at the Eleventh Census: 1890.
Washington, DC: US Census Printing Office

In a number of states small groups of people, preferring the freedom of the woods or the seashore to the confinement of regular labor in civilization, have become in some degree distinct from their neighbors, perpetuating their qualities and absorbing into their number those of like disposition, without preserving very clear racial lines. Such are the remnants called Indians in some states where a pure-blooded Indian can hardly longer be found. In Tennessee such a group, popularly known as Melungeans, in addition to those still known as Cherokee.

This is a GOVERNMENT DOCUMENT recognizing the Melungeons as Indians, Cherokee Indians.  They were descendants of the Collins, the Gibsons, the Mullins, Goins etc.    So whatever they were 'marked as' 1790-1890 was simply our Government's paper genocide. 

On one census in the 1900s the entire Pamunkey Tribe in Virginia were marked as 'B' or 'M'  they sued the census bureau and won.  

1900 Census 



INSTRUCTIONS FOR FILLING THIS SCHEDULE


This modified form of Schedule No 1 is to be used in making the enumertion of Indians, both those on the reservations and those living in family groups outside of reservations.

Detached Indians living either in white or negro families outside of reservations should be enumerted on the general populaton schedule (Form 7-224) as members of the families in which they are found: but detached whites or negroes living in Indian families should be enumerated on this schedule as members of the Indian families in which they are found. In other words, every family composed mainly of Indians should be reported entirely on this schedule and every family composed mainly of person not Indian should be reported entirely on the general population schedule.

http://www.historical-melungeons.com/mag_indians.html

Although they are descendants of the Melungeons identified as Cherokee in 1890 census and also listed as Cherokee Indians in 1900 Government Documents they were rejected in the Eastern Cherokee Rolls.  

I bet you didn't know the Eastern Cherokee were denied the same annuities and trust funds as the Oklahoma tribe. Chief Nimrod Smith [reported to be a Portuguese Cherokee] sued the Government in 1885, the following year the US Supreme Court ruled:

" that the Eastern Cherokee had dissolved their connection with the Cherokee Nation by their refusal to move west. The decision deprived them not only of the trust and annuity funds but also of their tribal status and consequently left them in an extremely ambiguous legal position."

https://tinyurl.com/2p8dtcn5

As my grampa would say.  Don't that just beat all.   https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2006/summer/indian-census.html 

The following story of "Fannie York Stevenson" written by Peggy Wellbern as told to her by her Mother-in-law, Crissie Wellbern, who was the granddaughter of Fannie York Stevenson Coomer.  

Betsie Green married Reubin Wheeler around 1750. She was an Irish girl with red hair, Reubin Wheeler had black hair, was Dutch and came from Norway or Sweeden. They had a son that was given his father's name, Reubin Wheeler.

When the father died Betsie Green Wheeler married again. This man's name was Reubin Gibson. Reubin Gibson adopted Reubin Wheeler Jr. and changed his name to Reubin Gibson. This family line continued with the name of Gibson by adoption but Wheeler by blood.

The boy, Reubin, married a girl named Araetta, her last name is not known.  Areatta had red hair and was English. It is said Araetta was born before her parents got in a house. These complete circumstances are not known.

We know of one child, a daughter, born to Reubin and Araetta. Her name was Nancy Gibson and she was born in 1809. She died at age 64, May 24, 1872.

 

Nancy Gibson married Hiram Stephenson. Hiram was the son of John Stephenson and his mother's last name was Stover. Hiram filed a claim on fifty acres of land on the Waters of Yellow Creek. Yellow Creek runs near the Cumberland Gap in Kentucky. They had two children, a son, Marion and a daughter Fannie York, born March 11, 1833 in Bell County, Kentucky on Yellow Creek (died at age 92, March 31, 1925).

 Hiram and Nancy separated. The two children stayed with Hiram and he married again to Emiline Henderson in Tennessee. Nancy later married Sammie Benington (he was great uncle of Doc Benington) in Laurel County, Kentucky.

 Marion and Fannie were unhappy with their stepmother and felt she was mean to them. They decided to run away from home when Fannie was eleven years old and Marion was nine years old. The two children walked across a mountain to a neighbor's house. He put them in a canoe and sent them out on the Cumberland River. They floated on the river all night until late the next afternoon. Fannie remembered to her children that it was fall of the year and she was cold. Marion took his coat off and put it around her.

A man saw the canoe in the near sundown with the two children in it. The canoe was then only one and one-half miles from the Cumberland Falls. The canoe would have reached the falls that night.  He swam out and rescued them. They were then sent to some of their relatives in Tennessee. They never again saw their father.

Fannie York Stephenson married Joseph Newton Coomer in 1864. Joseph Newton was born June 17, 1844 (died at age 81, June 26, 1925) (both are buried in Metcalfe County, Kentucky). Joseph Newton's father was William (Bill) Coomer and his mother was Maria Ashbrook. Maria was born July 12, 1814 (died December 1882). Her mother's last name was Fry. Joseph Newton Coomer was raised in Casey County, Kentucky near Mill Springs. He had a brother named James (Jim).

As soon as Fannie was old enough she hired out doing general housework, weaving cloth, etc.

Joseph and Fannie rented for 18 years, living in any kind of a cabin, before they had a home of their own. They settled finally in Edmonton, Kentucky.

They raised sheep, cotton and flax, geese and chickens and mot of their food. Fannie made thread and wove cloth from wool, cotton and flax. She then made the clothing and household linens from these, stitching them by hand.  Fannie and Joseph (they were known as Mama Coomer and Pa Joe to their grandchildren) had four daughters. A son was born between each girl but they died in infancy.

Fannie dug ginsang for most of what she bought in stores. She was considered a good midwife and gave a lot of time to this. Fannie worked in the field, did all the housework, until her girls were old enough to help. Fannie pieced quilts, made feather beds and pillows. Almost all their clothes were made by hand. She was an accomplished weaver, making different weaves such as seersucker, birdseye, honeycomb and many other kinds. Fannie knitted cotton socks for summer and woolen ones for winter. Her days startedlong before daylight and lasted until long after dark.

 She lived until age 92, continuing to work until her death. Her back was bent with age and hurt all the time, but she would not sit idle for any length of time.

 It is said in the family that she took a bath one night, outside, in cold weather and took pneumonia. Fannie died from this, preceding Pa Joe by three months.

 Fannie and Joseph Coomer's children were:

 

1. Nancy Myriah married Jim Acree  Children: Hershel, Sherman, Bruce, Bettie, Loren, Jasper, Mary Helen and Paul.

2. Araetta (Rettie) - (Named for Fannie Coomer's grandmother) married William Haskell Garmon. (Part of the information about Araetta's family has been added by Lillie Rackley, Araetta's granddaughter) They had two children, Clifton and William Robert (Robbie). Clifton married Minnie Phelps, just 3 months before he was killed when a board went through him while working at a sawmill, in 1911.  Araetta's husband died Feb. 27, 1905. The cause of his death is not now known.  Her second marriage was to Doc Stephenson. She & Doc never had any children.  William Robert was a barber. In his early life, he was a rural mail carrier, and delivered mail on horseback. He met his first wife, Esta Hubbard, by delivering her families's mail, and she would come to meet him to get the mail. He & Esta had two daughters, Dorothy Marie & Beaulah Mae. Robbie & Esta divorced.

Robbie later married Christine Hubbard (a niece to Esta). They had two children, a boy and a girl, Lillie Mae & William Earnest (Bill). Lillie Mae married William Newton Rackley; they have a son and a daughter, Sammy Joe and Donna DeLynn. Bill married Paula Kay Fowler and they have one son, Brian.

3. Mary Katherine (Mollie) (12-6-1877---10-16-1951) married FinisBenton Williams (6-23-1882---4-24-1954). Their four children were: 

Inus Golon  8-30-1906---12-27-1926 (had three boys); Lizzie Mae 3-17-1906;

Mary Lee 12-4- 1908; John K. 4-3-1911 (John K. was living in Breeding,Ky in 1993).

 4. Sarah Delina (Sallie) married Daniel Lawson Coomer - their children were George, Lawrence, Cecil, Ercy, Crissie, Fannie, Joseph, Eva, Dexia.

Crissie Coomer married Arthur Randolph Wellbern on January 1, 1918. Crissie died Dec. 25, 1986. They had one son: Fredrick Arthur. He married Peggy McDougle and they had four sons: Stephen, Michael, Gary and Warren.

 Submitted by: Lillie Rackley

email: lrackley@unicomp.net

 

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 28 November 1809 -- James Parks, Henrico Co., Va., to Job Crabtree, Lee Co., Va., - $600, 1000 acres on Mulberry Creek, beg--- corner to land of Reuben Wheeler's -- Wit John Crabtree, Randolph Noe, Nimrod Chrisman.  Book 2 page 277

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Branch, James. grantee.  DATE  8 April 1800. NOTE  Location: Lee County.  

NOTE  Description: 1000 acres on the head of Mulberry Creek. adjoining Reuben Wheeler.  

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William Carmack, born February 24, 1784 in Washington County, Virginia; died April 21, 1861; married Rosannah Wheeler 1808 in Hawkins County, Tennessee; born January 01, 1790; died July 18, 1849.

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 This may be Reuben Gibson, father of Reuben Wheeler Gibson, Reuben Gibson is found in Orange County, North Carolina tax with Thomas Gibson.