# Melungeon Jews

Melungeon Jews (Hebrew: יהודי מלנג'ון) are a small group of American descendants of historically tri-racial isolate groups who have converted to Judaism.
Descendants believe that some of their ancestors were Sephardi crypto-Jews who remained isolated in the Southern United States, primarily Appalachia. Current historical and genetic research does not support the claim of recent Sephardi descent or Crypto-Judaism among any Melungeon families.
Research has shown Melungeon descendants to be overwhelmingly of European descent, with direct paternal and maternal lines being predominately of African, European, or more rarely, Native American origin. Some families also have descent from early East Indian indentured servants.
Rabbi Arnold Belzer of Congregation Mickve Israel in Savannah, Georgia, a historic colonial-era Reform synagogue founded by Western Sephardim, endorsed the view that Melungeons should return to Judaism and did not require conversion.

## Origin

Some modern researchers believe that early Atlantic Creole slaves, descended from or acculturated by Iberian lançados and Sephardi Jews fleeing the Inquisition, were one of the pre-cursor populations to modern American tri-racial isolate groups. Many creoles, once in British America, were able to obtain their freedom and many married into local white families.
Report of Indians Taxed and not Taxed within the "Tennessee" report, "The civilized (self-supporting) Indians of Tennessee, counted in the general census numbered 146 (71 males and 75 females) and are distributed as follows: Hawkins county, 31; Monroe county, 12; Polk county, 10; other counties (8 or less in each), 93. Quoting from the report:
   The Melungeans or Malungeans, in Hawkins county, claim to be Cherokees of mixed blood (white, Indian, and negro), their white blood being derived, as they assert, from English and Portuguese stock. They trace their descent primarily to 2 Indians (Cherokees) known, one of them as Collins, the other as Gibson, who settled in the mountains of Tennessee, where their descendants are now to be found, about the time of the admission of that state into the Union (1796).

## Surnames of Iberian origin

Some families descended from early free people of color in colonial America have Iberian surnames, likely originating from lançados in West Africa and African creoles in Portuguese colonies, such as:
* Chavis - Chávez
* Driggers - Rodríguez
* Francisco or Sisco
* Rosario or De Rosario

## Sources

* ↑ "The mystery of the Melungeons – A.D. Miller". admillerbooks.com. Retrieved 2024-12-11.
* ↑ "Down in the valley, up on the ridge". The Economist. ISSN 0013-0613. Retrieved 2024-12-11.
* ↑ Naziri, Micah Ben David. "The Blogs: Indigenous Judean Roots: Smashing Antisemitic "Settler-Colonialist" Narratives". blogs.timesofisrael.com. Retrieved 2024-12-11.
* ↑ "Melungeons: Are You Part of "The Lost Tribe Of Appalachia"?". Family Tree Magazine. 2019-08-01. Retrieved 2024-12-11.
* ↑ Benson, J. A. (2009-12-08). "Part IX Sephardic Jews and the LDS Connection: The Great Melungeon Migration". The Millennial Star. Retrieved 2024-12-11.
* ↑ Yates, Donald N.; Hirschman, Elizabeth C. (2010). "Toward a Genetic Profile of Melungeons in Southern Appalachia". Appalachian Journal. 38 (1): 92–111. ISSN 0090-3779.
* ↑ "The Jews of Appalachia | Yo, Yenta!". 2005-09-19. Retrieved 2024-12-11.
* ↑ "Melungeons in Virginia". www.virginiaplaces.org. Retrieved 2024-12-13.
* ↑ Montgomery, Mary Helen (2013-01-30). "A Code To Live By In Appalachia". Transom. Retrieved 2024-12-12.
* ↑ "The Weaver Settlement". freeafricanamericans.com. Retrieved 2024-12-12.
* ↑ Yates, Donald (2020-12-03). "20 Years of Melungeon Research". DNA Consultants. Retrieved 2024-12-11.
* ↑ Foner, Eric (8 June 2018). "Ira Berlin, 1941–2018". The Nation.
* ↑ O'Neill, Brian Juan (2017). "Review of Creole Societies in the Portuguese Colonial Empire, Havik, Philip J., and Malyn Newitt, eds". Africa Today. 63 (4): 84–90. doi:10.2979/africatoday.63.4.05. hdl:10071/14918. JSTOR 10.2979/africatoday.63.4.05.
* ↑ "African blacks and Mulattos in the 17th-Century Amsterdam Portuguese Jewish community". www.asser.nl. Retrieved 2024-05-27.
* ↑ Mark, Peter; Horta, José da Silva (2013). The Forgotten Diaspora: Jewish Communities in West Africa and the Making of the Atlantic World. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-107-66746-4.
* ↑ Schorsch, Jonathan (2019). "Revisiting Blackness, Slavery, and Jewishness in the Early Modern Sephardic Atlantic". A Letter's Importance: The Spelling of Daka(h) (Deut. 23:2) and the Broadening of Western Sephardic Rabbinic Culture. doi:10.1163/9789004392489_022. ISBN 978-90-04-39248-9.
* ↑ Kananoja, Kalle (2013). Mariana Pequena, a black Angolan jew in early eighteenth-century Rio de Janeiro (Report). hdl:1814/27607.
* ↑ Mozingo, Joe (2012). The Fiddler on Pantico Run: An African Warrior, His White Descendants, A Search for Family. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 978-1-4516-2761-9.
* ↑ Berlin, Ira (1996). "From Creole to African: Atlantic Creoles and the Origins of African-American Society in Mainland North America". The William and Mary Quarterly. 53 (2): 251–288. doi:10.2307/2947401. JSTOR 2947401.
* ↑ Bartl, Renate (2018). American tri-racials: African-Native contact, multi-ethnic Native American Nations, and the ethnogenesis of tri-racial groups in North America (Thesis). Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. doi:10.5282/edoc.26874.
* ↑ Berlin, Ira (2017). "From Creole to African: Atlantic Creoles and the Origins of African-American Society in Mainland North America". Critical Readings on Global Slavery (4 vols.). pp. 1216–1262. doi:10.1163/9789004346611_039. ISBN 978-90-04-34661-1.
* ↑ "The Anti-Amalgamation Law is Passed". African American Registry. Retrieved 2024-05-27.
* ↑ Wolfe, Brendan. "Free Blacks in Colonial Virginia". Encyclopedia Virginia. Retrieved 2024-05-27.
* ↑ "Introduction to Free African Americans of North Carolina, Virginia, and South Carolina". freeafricanamericans.com. Retrieved 2024-05-27.
* ↑ Dodge, David (January 1886). "The Free Negroes of North Carolina". The Atlantic.
* ↑ "Chavis Family". freeafricanamericans.com. Retrieved 2024-12-13.
* ↑ "Driggers-Dutchfield". freeafricanamericans.com. Retrieved 2024-12-13.
* ↑ "Scott-Skipper". freeafricanamericans.com. Retrieved 2024-12-13.
* ↑ "Roberts-Sawyer". freeafricanamericans.com. Retrieved 2024-12-13.
* ↑ "Davis-Drew". freeafricanamericans.com. Retrieved 2024-12-13.