paul heinegg according to the tennessee encyclopedia of history and culture a dissertation by edward price a cultural geographer documented that melungeons were families descended from free people of color and mixed race unions in colonial virginia beginning in the researcher paul heinegg has published extensive documentation of his research into numerous families of free people of color in the upper south beginning with those listed in the censuses of in virginia and north carolina whose descendants migrated into kentucky and tennessee he found that most could be traced to free mixed race families formed of descendants of unions between white women and african men in colonial virginia they migrated along with european american neighbors to frontier areas where they found less restrictive racial conditions in some cases he found that descendants consistently married white and had children of increasingly european american or white appearance heinegg has frequently updated his book and online version of data nothing in this mentions melungeons the sources does not mention melungeons either so this should be removed we should only use stuff in a article about melungeons which is directly about melungeons the person who added this attempted to use free person of color to mean african american when the law stated free person of color was not just african american it was a catch all term this court among other things instructs the jury as follows persons that are known and recognized by the constitution and laws of tennessee as free persons of color are those who by the act of section are taken and deemed to be capable in law to be certified in any case what is in except against each other or in the language of the statute all negroes indians mulattoes and all persons of mixed blood descended from negro or indian ancestors to the third generation inclusive though one ancestor of each generation may have been a white person white bond or free instructions to the jury joshua f perkins vs john r white so free person of color would mean any race that was not pure white either way the paragraph should be removed as it does not mention melungeons at all nor does the sources used