Read – Page 15 – Before We Were White

Covid, Cotton Mather, and Cultural Cross-Pollination

8 November 2022/0 Comments/in Blog /by Brian Halpin

Cotton Mather, Puritan minister and pioneer of smallpox inoculation

Regular followers of this blog will know that as a history geek, I never neglect an opportunity to frame today’s events through an historical lens.

Which is why, upon the occasion of receiving a Covid-19 booster vaccine, my mind wandered back to the 17th century…

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Cotton Mather was a Puritan minister in late 17th and early 18th century colonial New England.

He was also a mover behind the infamous Salem Witch Trials of 1692.

In hindsight, we might be tempted to judge harshly, and call him a superstitious fool.

But Mather was operating largely within the knowledge and understanding of the world available to most Anglo-American Protestants at the time.

I’m less inclined to give him a “pass” as a slaveholder – after all, Quakers and others at the time were loud-spoken in their denunciations of human bondage, so no, slavery wasn’t just considered “normal back then” by everyone.

But even Cotton Mather, believer in witchcraft, was able to set aside at least some of his preconceptions, when faced with new evidence.

You see, a slave who Mather named Onesimus (from Hebrew scripture, of course), was an African with experience in the treatment of smallpox – a disease which was then ravaging European, African, and Native American populations.

The European introduction of smallpox and other European diseases to America is believed to have killed up to 90% of Eastern indigenous Americans, who had virtually zero natural immunity to these new pathogens.

During one particularly severe smallpox outbreak, Onesimus suggested that Mather try using an African method for protection from the disease. That method, improved over time, is what we would later call “inoculation”.

Cotton Mather was wise enough to set aside his sense of cultural and intellectual superiority, and listen to his “servant”.

Mather opened his mind to EVIDENCE.

If only modern anti-vaxxers possessed the humility and wisdom of a witch-hunting preacher from three centuries ago…

#BeforeWeWereWhite #history #CottonMather #Onesimus #smallpox #puritans #SalemWitchTrials

The Mechanics of Colonialism

6 November 2022/0 Comments/in Blog /by Brian Halpin

Forts, Settlements, and Migration Routes into Frontier-Era Tennessee and Kentucky

During the 11th and 12th centuries, in an age before gunpowder, the Normans were able to conquer England by constructing forts (motte-and-bailey “castles”) on newly occupied land.

The exact same method – colonisation by fort-building – was employed in Southern Appalachia by land-hungry Americans in the aftermath of the Revolutionary War.

Settlers were not entering a wilderness. They were entering lands with existing communities, trade networks, farms, and towns.

This is why the Americans who followed the first trappers and longhunters had to build “stations”, blockhouses, and forts along the trails and rivers by which they were entering and intruding upon land belonging to others.

With the advantage of an almost inexhaustible source population, gunpowder and firearms, this American-style “motte-and-bailey” system of occupation took far less time than the earlier, but similar, Norman subjugation of England.

This system can be seen in action to this very day, in places like the Levant, where illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian land (the equivalent of Appalachian longhunters and squatters) are eventually fully supported by the coloniser’s military installations and a judicial system weighted in favour of the coloniser.

But enough of comparisons and analogies.

Here is a map I made as an aid in understanding the mechanism of early American colonialism.

With the exception of some scattered Spanish and French communties (which were often mostly Métis), every single place on this map was land still belonging to non-European Americans at the time.

#BeforeWeWereWhite #AmericanHistory #Appalachia #AmericanFrontier

Blonde Bombshells and “Damaged Goods”

4 November 2022/0 Comments/in Blog /by Brian Halpin

A young Marilyn Monroe

Legendary film star Marilyn Monroe was born in 1926 to a mother who was first married aged only 14.

We can only speculate what role, if any, this child marriage played in the later mental health issues which would plague Gladys Pearl Monroe.

Gladys was actually born in Mexico to railway worker Otis Monroe and his wife Della Mae Hogan, with the family moving to California around the year 1900.

Her marriage at 14 to Jasper Baker was “stormy”, with many later accounts accusing Baker of extreme domestic violence. Gladys appears to have already been pregnant at the time of her first marriage, giving birth to their first child, a son named Robert Baker, at the tender age of 15.

Gladys Monroe managed to extricate herself from this marriage at the age of 20, already a mother of two children, but her children were taken away by Jasper Baker.

Gladys Monroe married again in Los Angeles at the age of 22, this time to a man called Martin Mortenson.

The exact hows and whys are unclear, but this marriage also broke down, and Gladys became pregnant by a work colleague (and married man) named Charles Gifford in 1926.

The child of this tryst, Norma Jeane, took the surname of her mother’s still legal husband, and was officially born as “Norma Jeane Mortenson” on paper.

Norma Jeane had what can only be called a desperate and difficult childhood, with “home” a constant rotation between intermittent spells with her birth mother, and time spent with foster parents, work colleagues of her erratic mother, and in orphanages.

Norma Jeane’s mother would spend her first spell in an asylum for the insane when Norma Jeane was only nine years old, after suffering what was then called “a nervous breakdown”. Gladys Monroe would later be diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia…

Norma Jeane would take various quasi-paternal surnames before settling on her mother’s maiden name – the name by which she would become famous.

While guessing ethnicity from photos is a fool’s game of phenotype analysis, I am still posting this series of photos because I have some familiarity with the Hogan and Nance families behind Marilyn Monroe‘s mother, and her mother before her.

Marilyn Monroe’s direct maternal line

They are my own distant relations (Norma Jeane is an 8th cousin). Lest this seem like a wish for fame by association, I will point out that Charles Manson is a closer 7th cousin…

We would find that we are all cousins in one way or another if we cared to dig deeply enough.

Both the Nance and Hogan families of Marilyn Monroe‘s maternal lineage are mixed-ethnic, “Old Mix American” people, and it is hard to ignore the possibility that the tragic lives of Norma Jeane and her mother were at least partially the result of trans-generational trauma.

The extremely low social status of most Black and mixed-ethnic women throughout American history made the formation and development of confident, ambitious young girls from such backgrounds the exception, rather than the rule – at least until more recent times.

Monroe was found dead of an apparent barbiturate overdose in the summer of 1962, after suffering years of anxiety, bouts of depression, and low self-esteem coupled with the type of substance abuse we would now call “self-medication”.

The sheer charisma and comic genius this oft-times lost little girl managed to give the world in her 36 short years – despite her desperate family background and ruthless exploitation by various men and a deeply sexist film industry – was a miracle of human, and especially female, resilience.

Paint Me A Picture

30 October 2022/0 Comments/in Blog /by Brian Halpin

Cigano (Portuguese Romani) Slave Traders, 19th century Brazil [painting by Debret]

Painters, not unlike musicians or actors, need patrons or a paying audience.

This might seem obvious, but it has a direct bearing on how we view history.

English society has been notoriously class-conscious since the first Norman warlords began erecting their stone fortresses – aka castles – among the peoples of England after 1066.

These Normans/Northmen (of Normandy in France) were really just “Frenchified” Vikings with a serious superiority complex after spending a few generations away from their Northern homelands.

Their “Viking French” became the language of the ruling classes in Britain, and this legacy survives right down to the present day, even in American English.

When we want to sound educated, we tend to use words evolved from the French language.

When we want plain talk, we tend to use words evolved mostly from Saxon English.

Think of the difference between saying “an illuminated chamber”, or “a well-lit room”.

But I digress (or “wander off-path”, if we avoid French usages here).

Our deeply-ingrained sense of social class, for much of history, dictated what was deemed worthy of recording.

In the age before affordable photography, only very few people could afford to pay a trained artist for a portrait or painting.

The peasantry, the underclasses, and the poor were only rarely subjects for the artist’s brush – they simply couldn’t pay for such a service.

So art as a paid occupation – in the age before social realism – was generally concerned with portraiture of the ruling classes, landscapes, religious themes, and the documentation of “great events” – with only a few noteworthy exceptions.

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I invite any reader here to fire-up a search engine, and attempt to locate contemporary images of the American working classes and underclasses from any time before the mid-19th century.

Paintings, etchings, drawings, anything.

You will find precious little.

What is more, by the time American painters DID decide to paint scenes from the lives of frontierspeople and common people, America as a whole was already actively, aggressively engaged in curating its own myth.

Think of George Caleb Bingham‘s 1852 painting of Daniel Boone leading “white settlers” through the Cumberland Gap – a painting made over 80 years after the events it sought to portray.

Yet even before Daniel Boone had crossed the mountains into “Ken-te-ke“, people of mixed ethnicity from the Virginia and Carolina backcountry had been hunting and trading among the Indians in both Kentucky and Tennessee.

Later generations would refer to this mixed crew as “Melungeons“, and begin to construct a dubious mythology around them, as if the existence of free “brown people” were a mysterious affront to the natural order.

Yet there was little mystery to it. Since the time of first European contact, the underclasses in North America had been intermixing with one another.

Spaniards, Portuguese, Portuguese Jews, Romani, Irish, Scots, Welshmen, Finns, Germans, Poles, Swedes, Dutchmen and Frenchmen.

Intermixing with Malagasy, Africans, Caribbeans, South Asians, Arabs or “Moors”, Yuchi, Catawba, Lenape, Pamunkey, Cherokee, Shawnee – you name it, they were all there in the first melting pot.

Yet we see none of these mixed or “brown” families represented in the story of the “American frontier”, and they are almost never represented in art.

This is where it gets a little ticklish and complex, because there ARE early American drawings of “non-white” people in scenes such as slave markets and slave auctions, or indigenous peoples shown in obsequious postures of “the vanquished”, or in romanticized portrayals of “noble savages”.

Yet the presence of these people in contemporary art was almost incidental, with the indigenous and enslaved treated more like props than human subjects.

This is because America was happy to portray “The Three Americas” which underpinned the racial caste system – Black, White, Indian – but only if the use of “non-white props” served a supremacist narrative.

Anyone who was not “Black” (and thus unfree), anyone who was not “Red” (and thus savage), became by default and by design, “White” – and thus free.

White, Savage, or Slave. With very few exceptions, when speaking of freeborn citizens, “Brown” was simply not an option.

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As we’ve already suggested, most artists in 16th and 17th century class-conscious colonial America painted what they deemed to be “worthy” subjects – or at least subjects who could afford to pay them.

In other words, the “white” merchant classes, religious leaders and elites.

So decades and centuries of art mostly portrayed only three groups of people at best – well-to-do “whites”, enslaved “blacks”, or “Indians”.

Needless to say, the brown and impoverished underclasses rarely sat for painters who worked mostly in large coastal towns and cities.

For their own futures and safety, the mixed-ethnic brown underclasses were usually pressing ever westward, or keeping to the hills and hollers, swamps and backwoods…

In the post-Revolutionary years, (as many American artists began to turn their faces away from “elite” subjects and to the historical men and women who were deemed worthy of remembrance as nation builders), painters could no longer conceive that the American frontier was actually settled in large part by “brown people”.

Yet it was.

And we can prove it by examining early camera lucida drawings and photographs, reading court and census documents, and cross-referencing folklore and DNA.

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The paintings shown here were made by a French gentleman in early 1800s Brazil, a man named Debret. An unusual man with an early, almost anthropological fascination with the “non-white” peoples of Brazil.

The one above shows the house of Portuguese Cigano “Gypsy” slave traders in Rio de Janeiro. The one below shows what are probably “Genizaro” or mixed-ethnic slave traders marching Guarani captives to market.

Slave Traders in 19th Century Brazil, possibly Genizaros [painting by Debret]

What does this have to do with Anglo-American history?

SIMILAR SCENES WERE OCCURRING FROM MAINE TO SOUTH CAROLINA TO LOUISIANA TO TEXAS TO CALIFORNIA, even if we are not lucky enough to have had a painter like Debret working in such places.

Catholic Spanish and Portuguese America saw people of mixed ethnicity as existing on a spectrum of “casto”.

Protestant Anglo-America, perhaps due to a more simplistic Manichean view of things, tried desperately to reduce much of the world into binaries. Good/evil. Black/white.

Artificial binaries were good for defining real humans versus “property”. Free versus unfree.

But humans refuse to slot into ridiculous and arbitrary categories.

American “folk heroes” like Jim Bowie were trading with mixed-ethnic pirates for slaves among the mixed-ethnic communities of the Gulf Coast before Texan “independence” from Mexico. “Gulf of America”, indeed…

Jewish slave merchants operated out of Maryland, Rhode Island, and Charleston, with households often comprised of “free people of color”.

Many indigenous American tribes had become drawn deeply into this sordid trade, and many people of African origin became absorbed into tribal communities like the Seminole, Cherokee, and Choctaw.

Métis communities and mixed-ethnic “prairie bandits” lived for decades on the lands which would only later become the Louisiana Purchase.

And all of these people (who were often brown to begin with) “co-mingled” endlessly, thus creating an even larger brown American underclass – an unsung and largely forgotten part of America – some of whom would spend decades, centuries, attempting to cross the color bar into “whiteness”.

The “Scots-Irish” and Appalachia, Part 2 (or I’m Going To Jackson…but not THAT Jackson)

1 October 2022/0 Comments/in Blog /by Brian Halpin

Hiram Keith with wife Elizabeth Ashby

As a kid growing up in 1960s and 1970s Missouri, Tennessee, Oklahoma, and Arizona, there was always a deep ambivalence in my family regarding “book learning”.

Book learning was great if it led to a good job or a roof over one’s head.

Where book learning became less welcome was the point at which it mentioned things like slavery. Or the theory of evolution.

Too much book learning was seen as a sign of thinking you might be better than less-educated people.

“Ten dollar words” were not only frowned upon – they were greeted with derision and outright hostility.

Now, on one level I understand these folks. No book is going to make a person a good mechanic, carpenter, sailor, or parent. A book might help here and there, but some things are only learned properly by DOING. Fair enough.

No one wants to be lectured by a “theoretical farmer” straight out of agricultural college when your family has been managing the same piece of ground for generations.

But some things ARE only found in books. Especially history books, because once we are dead, we are, literally, history.

And because living families carefully curate their stories, there is often a visceral fear of books. Because once someone is dead, especially long dead, all that remains are folk stories – and books, and documents.

History is the delicate dance between documents, and the living who must try to interpret those documents.

And when these interpretations don’t match the carefully curated family folklore, when these interpretations don’t match the carefully curated national folklore, certain bad things can happen.

Like culture wars. Like the banning of certain books.

My recent post on the overstated impact of the “Scots-Irish” on Appalachian culture got quite a few responses and shares. That’s great. It’s the reason writers write.

One gentleman suggested my views were off the mark, and that in his region, there were at least three “Scots-Irish” families for every family of English or German descent – let alone people of “non-white” ancestry.

He further suggested that West Virginia might have less “Scots-Irish” due to the historical influx of immigrant mine-workers.

This blog and podcast rarely concerns itself with late 19th century industrial immigration.

What we are interested in are the earliest origins of what is often called “heartland America”, those people with families stretching right back to pre-Revolutionary times, the people who were on the bleeding edge of the earliest frontiers.

I’m going to share what I know about one small part of Breathitt County, Kentucky. The town of Jackson, a small place, so not too hard to cast a glance over.

Here is a small cross-section of families present in Jackson, Breathitt County, KY during the 1800s. I have intentionally left out “Johnny-come-lately” immigrants, that is to say, families arriving in America during the mid-to-late 1800s. Because the bulk of “Scots-Irish” immigration occurred during the first three-quarters of the 1700s, they are of course included where present.

Here are some surnames “A” to “K”. If there is any interest, I can post the second half of the alphabet later this week. Remember! Having a surname which sounds of a particular ethnic background means very little in early American history. People of ALL backgrounds “borrowed” surnames from the British Isles – indigenous people, people of African ancestry, Jewish people, Romani people, Portuguese people, German people…

This list is neither highly-selective, nor does it claim to be comprehensive. It is merely based on my own research into multi-ethnic America. If anyone out there can share the surnames of documentable “Scots-Irish” families of Jackson, Breathitt County, KY, please do! The population today is still just over 2,200, so we should be able to find them.

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Adkins (earliest assumed ancestor – William Vortimer Adkin, born 1689 VA) “Scots-Irish”? NO.

Aikman (origins unclear – most genealogies claim Scottish origins, but NOT via Ulster) No evidence of Scots-Irish ancestry at hand.

Allen (origins unclear – earliest known ancestors from 1600s Tidewater Virginia) “Scots-Irish”? NO.

Back (origins unclear – descended from apparently German “Bachs” of colonial Virginia, possibly Sinti)

Baker (origins unclear – related to early Bakers who intermarried with multi-ethnic Bolling families) No evidence of “Scots-Irish” ancestry at hand

Barnett (origins unclear – no records prior to 1820, with one “Joshua Barnett” head of household in Ohio County, KY including people of color)

Black (descended from a Scot or Ulster Scot, but family heavily intermarried with Germans, and indeed, French and some Portuguese)

Blanton (origins unclear due to apparent “non-paternal event” involving Bakers. Other Blantons in Harlan County, KY fought with Bunch‘s Regiment. Some Blanton men of dark complexion nicknamed “Gip” – origins of these Blantons also unclear)

Bryant (origins unclear, although most genealogies suggest Welsh ancestry. Earliest proven ancestor “William Bryant“, slaveholder and friend of non-Scots-Irishman Daniel Boone)

Burton (origins unclear, earliest documented ancestors found in 18th century Tennessee, North Carolina and Virginia. Many Burtons of Wales and Somerset, England carry Romani DNA haplo)

Campbell (origins unclear – most genealogies claim Scottish origins, but NOT via Ulster. Heavily intermarried with German Eversole and French Fugate families)

Clarkston (earliest documented ancestors George Clarkston b.1745 and George’s son Thomas Clarkston b.1787. Thomas apparently married to Nellie Feathers, woman with haplotype most common in Balkan region and southern France)

Collins (origins unclear – earliest documented ancestor William Collins b.1809 in Tennessee, who may have been son or nephew of Melungeon Valentine Collins.)

Conley (Connolly) (although an apparently Irish surname, earliest known ancestor Henry Connolly is referred-to in legal documents as a “Dutchman” with poor English??!!)

Combs (Coombs) (earliest documented ancestors from early 1700s Virginia. Notables included the Tory soldier, slaveholder, and killer Nicholas Combs)

Cornett (earliest likely ancestor John Cornett b. 1702 Henrico County, VA. Cornetts of Kentucky deeply multi-ethnic, with no sign of “Scots-Irish” ancestry)

Counts (slaveholders and descendants of Fort Germanna settlements – family lore refers to Counts people as “Black Dutch“, i.e. mixed or possibly German Romani ancestry)

Deaton (slaveholders, earliest documented ancestor Thomas Deaton of Henrico County, VA, whose son William Deaton also fought on the Tory side)

Evans (origins unclear – earliest documented ancestors appear in 1700s VA and NC. Surname is Welsh, and family intermarried with Welsh Bryants)

Francis (origins unclear – earliest documented ancestors appear in 1700s VA and KY. Intermarried with aforementioned Coombs and Fugate families.)

Fugate (well-known multi-ethnic Appalachian family of ultimately French origins. Famous for rare genetic condition which once rendered family members blue in color.)

Gaye (origins unclear, but likely connected in some way to Gaye and Bolling families of early Henrico County, VA.)

Gibson (origins unclear – earliest documented ancestors appear in mid-1700s NC. See Melungeon Gibsons for possible connections)

Gose (origins unclear – earliest documented ancestors such as “Dutch John Gose” appear in mid-1700s NC. Many Gose people of Breathitt County enumerated as “mulattos“, and intermarried with multi-ethnic Nichols/Nickell/Knuckles families.)

Harris (origins extremely murky – some Harris people of Breathitt descendants of Benjamin Harris, b.1795. Little more is known.)

Hensley (earliest origins unclear – earliest documented ancestors such as slaveholder Henry Hensley appear in mid-1700s VA. His childrens’ households included “free people of color”, and intermarried with “Angels” and “Howards“.)

Hogg (slaveholders; earliest origins unclear – earliest documented ancestors include Thomas Hogg b. 1740 VA. Most genealogies suggest Scottish origins, but NOT via Ulster)

Hoskins (origins extremely murky – earliest documented ancestor probably the killer John Hoskinson of Maryland who changed/shortened his name and moved to Ohio Country, his sons moving down into KY. Name very common among the English Romani.)

Hounshell (earliest known ancestor Johann “John Hounshell” Hauenschild who died 1810 in VA., presumably of German extraction. All sons were slaveholders.)

Howard (earliest documented ancestor John Howard, born NC early 1700s. Sons and grandsons apparently intermarried with both indigenous and Melungeon Mullins women)

Joseph (earliest origins unclear – earliest documented ancestors from mid-1700s Delaware and Maryland, intermarried with multi-ethnic Salyers, Huffs, and Arnetts of Magoffin County, KY. No “Scots-Irish” here.)

Keith (origins extremely murky – earliest documented ancestor William Keith, whose dirt poor “preacher” son Hugh Daniel Keith abandoned family to run away with a young girl – but not before fathering other children by a slave consort. Hence the many “Keith” people once enumerated as “mulatto“.)

#BeforeWeWereWhite #history #ScotsIrish #appalachia #genealogy

The “Scots-Irish” and Appalachia, Part 1

1 October 2022/0 Comments/in Blog /by Brian Halpin

Altazara Smith and children

After all these years of being told that the “Scots-Irish” are the embodiment of Southern Appalachian culture, that the “Scots-Irish” are the progenitors of mountain music, that the “Scots-Irish” virtually built America, that the “Scots-Irish” were “born fighting” and thus the reason for feud culture and honor killing in the hills and hollers…

No. This researcher has cast an eye over quite literally tens of thousands of records from every county in Southern Appalachia, and is yet to find one single town, one single county, in which these “Scots-Irish” were the majority ethnic group.

Even the feuds so beloved of American lore only rarely featured families with ancestry able to be traced back to Northern Ireland.

French versus Eversole.

Tolliver versus Martin.

Hacker versus Barger.

Swafford versus Tollett.

Hensley versus DeZarn.

Even Hatfield versus McCoy.

Howard. Philpot. Mullins. Begley. Sizemore. Ingram.

Not a son of Ulster among ’em. Most reputable historians actually based in Ireland are deeply sceptical of this ethnic category called “Scots-Irish” – at least in the sense that the term is used in America.

Ulster, the northernmost province of Ireland, from the time of English (and Welsh and Scottish) colonisation in the early 1600s until the American Revolution, was not ethnically-cleansed of its Gaelic inhabitants, and nor were the many English, Scottish and Welsh labourers piling into Ulster during “plantation” universally Protestant, never mind Presbyterian.

Many were simply migrant labourers escaping hard times in Wales, Northern England and lowland Scotland, chasing the “boom” occurring in the Wild West of Plantation (colonised) Ulster.

Unlike many American immigrants, the so-called “Scots-Irish” – actual Ulster Presbyterians with Scottish ancestry – often left a reasonable paper trail, in the form of congregational and ship’s charter documents, and it is not terribly difficult to trace their subsequent land transactions and migrations.

No, southern Appalachia was settled and colonised by a far more complex mish-mash of peoples.

And to understand it, we will need to discover why women in the mountains carried names such as “Altazara Smith” (see photo).

Next week we will begin publishing and sharing a compendium of Appalachian female names.

Let’s just say these names seem rather unusual for Ulster Protestants…

#BeforeWeWereWhite #history #ScotsIrish #appalachia #names #genealogy

Speaking Chinese in the Wild West

1 October 2022/0 Comments/in Blog /by Brian Halpin

Chinese tradespeople in 19th century Arizona Territory

The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was America’s first, and possibly only, federal law explicitly forbidding the immigration of a specific ethnic group.

Intended to remain in place for a period of ten years, many Americans might be unaware that this legislation, in one form or another, persisted until 1943!!

Even after this, the USA operated a “National Origins Formula“.

This is a term used to describe a whole range of laws and measures used from the 1920s up until the passage of The Civil Rights Act of the 1960s as a way of keeping America “white” and ostensibly “Christian”.

Here are some Chinese workers in Arizona Territory, as mentioned in our podcast episode “My Little Runaway“…

#BeforeWeWereWhite #history #ChineseAmericans #WildWest

“Old Mix” American Surnames – “Cates”

25 September 2022/0 Comments/in Blog /by Brian Halpin

Cates and Fields families of Jefferson County, Tennessee, including Richard Baldwin Cates

When researching early American history, it is important to remember that many, many families whose ethnic and linguistic history was “non-Anglo”, almost reflexively seem to have referred to themselves in the plural or patrynomic form of their chosen surname.

Perhaps this was a reflection of differing cultural attitudes to names, family, and community?

This means that people who had assumed, adapted, or “borrowed” an English suranme (such as indigenous peoples, Métis, Africans, Jewish, Romani, Germans, et al) seem to have been more likely to add an “S” to surnames.

Aiken/Akins, Beaver (Bieber)/Beavers, Clower (Clauer)/Clowers, Elkin/Elkins, Field/Fields, Leffert/Lefferts, Mullin (Moulin)/Mullins, Salyer/Salyers, Spear (Speer) /Spears, Wood/Woods, and so on.

This can lead to some serious confusion. An example would be the surname “Cate“. There are people really named “Cate“, and there are people who took the name “Cate“, but then added the patrynomic “S”, becoming “Cates”

Still with us?

Then there is still another group – families who were enumerated or named in early documents according to the sound heard by English-speaking record takers.

For this example, consider the German surname “Götz” (also rendered “Goetz“).

To a native English speaker with only a rudimentary level of literacy, this surname sounds to all intents and purposes like “Cates“; and so was it often recorded, along with variations such as “Gates“.

And thus did many ethnically German people in Appalachia appear as “Anglos” in early documents.

Cate, Cates.

A surname used in America by people of multiple and mixed ethnicities.

#BeforeWeWereWhite #history #appalachia #genealogy #cates

Mapping “Old Mix” Appalachia

17 September 2022/0 Comments/in Blog /by Brian Halpin

Map Showing Counties of Southern Appalachia with Substantial Multi-Ethnic Populations

There are innumerable multi-ethnic communities and population groups in the USA, many with their deepest roots pre-dating the Plymouth and Jamestown colonies.

Southern Appalachia had its own particular set of circumstances leading to the formation of multi-ethnic communities there. Origin stories for these groups have been put forth over many decades, and each story was based in specific beliefs, biases, needs, and assumptions – often with little real evidence.

Almost every explanation offered thus far suffers from over-simplification.

The most common of these over-simplified stories refers to Old Mix Appalachians as “tri-racial isolates”.

This belief in black, white, and red “races” is a direct result of America’s history of chattel slavery, in which all people were required to slot into a “privileged” or “unprivileged” caste or group.

But the rural, unenslaved poor who gathered in the Carolina backcountry and Piedmont just before and after the American Revolution were not all “white”, at least not in the racist sense of that word.

That is to say, the underclasses of the Appalachian frontier were not all of Central and Northern European origin. And even when they were of European origin, they were often drawn from “non-white” sections of the European population (Jewish and Romani peoples, for example).

As for the large number of non-Europeans entering North America, well, that is a complex and untold story.

Most might be forgiven for not realising that the navies and merchant shipping capabilities of Spain, Portugal, The Netherlands, and the Ottoman Empire (including North African client states) far outstripped those of Britain until well into the 1700s.

In other words, every ship in every port in the Americas was likely to include people and crew from places as far-flung as Indonesia, Madagascar, India, or South America.

Consider this extract from “The Negro Law of South Carolina, 1740”

SEC. 4. The term negro is confined to slave Africans, (the ancient Berbers) and their descendants. It does not embrace the free inhabitants of Africa, such as the Egyptians, Moors, or the negro Asiatics, such as the Lascars.

Setting aside the august legislators’ lack of geographical knowledge (in that the Berbers and Moors were often one and the same people), notice the explicit reference to “Lascars“?

Who were these people requiring explicit mention in colonial era legislation?

EVEN THE BRITISH NAVY RELIED GREATLY UPON SAILORS FROM THE FOUR CORNERS OF THE WORLD.

It has been estimated that up to 80% of regular crewmen on British naval vessels during the 1700s WERE NOT EVEN FROM THE BRITISH ISLES. Which brings us to these “Lascars” – sailors and crew from India.

Did badly treated crew members regularly “jump ship” in ports, looking for a better life?

Did British colonial authorities facilitate immigration of South Asian Indians to its North American colonies?

Yes, and yes.

Major English ports such as Liverpool even had entire waterfront districts populated by workers and former sailors from India.

Do people ever mention these people from India when discussing the ethnogenesis of Southern Appalachia?

Nope.

And yet they WERE there, families such as the Williams and Weavers. We find women in Appalachia bearing names such as “Gantanaga” and “Aruna” among communities more traditionally identifying as part Native American.

But enough of all this, at least for now.

Please enjoy this map I have produced after many years of research, a map showing those counties of Southern Appalachia with substantial populations of people sharing “non-white” ancestry, based on documentary, DNA, and photographic evidence collected from over 270,000 people, and counting.

This map is not about “tri-racial” ancestry. This map is about ancestry from virtually everywhere.

US demographers, sociologists, economists, historians, and anthropologists have spent the better part of a century and a half “squinting at the natives” of Appalachia, never appreciating Appalachia’s profound complexity. Again, this is largely due to America’s constant need to view everything through the binary spectacle lenses of “race”.

“Before We Were White” hopes to contribute in some way to a revision and correction of “The Story of America”.

If you enjoy or share this map, please give our website, social media, and podcast a mention!

#BeforeWeWereWhite #history #appalachia #melungeons

Love in a Hopeless Place

12 August 2022/0 Comments/in Blog /by Brian Halpin

Map of Predominating Sex – based on 1870 US Census Data

Here is another interesting map.

(Have I said that I like maps? I like maps.)

This 1870 map – based on US census data – is like 150-year-old social analytics. The darker the shaded area, the greater the disparity between the reported male and female populations of a given area.

It is interesting the questions which arise from what, on the face of it, seems just dry data.

Like why NW Pennsylvania had far fewer women than men at the time.

(Answer: The Pennsylvania oil rush)

Or why there were more women than men in Southern Appalachia and the Deep South.

(Answer: Probably the outfall of men lost during the Civil War, without the steady stream of replacement immigration such as that seen in the North)

No one would be surprised to note that areas along the western frontier were very much a man’s world.

Even more extraordinary (or disturbing) are the things we can infer from that fact, when we really think about it…

This boring old map is actually telling us that in 1870, many male Americans were:

1) Going without sex

2) Having sex with other men

3) Sharing women (including sex workers)

4) Taking partners from unenumerated population groups (such as slaves and indigenous women)

The girls in gingham dresses and sunbonnets were yet to arrive…

#BeforeWeWereWhite #history #maps #HistoryOfSex #AmericanFrontier