RESOURCES
IMPORTANT: We are in urgent need of funding to keep this project alive and ensure its future. If you’re enjoying the site, please consider contributing to our pre-launch campaign today. It is only with your help that I can continue this work. MORE INFO / DONATE
Thanks so much for your support! – Jes
Welcome to the resources page for Melungeon Roots. Here you’ll find all sorts of research materials to get you started or to help you on your journey. Use the filters to find exactly what you need. Resources are added and updated daily. Happy researching!
NOTE: I’ve only entered a VERY small percentage of the data that will eventually be available for filtering. Lots more to come!
- WARNING:
Some resources were included because of their historical significance, but they contain racist language, harmful stereotypes, and/or mature topics. I’m working to get warnings added to these items for anyone who would like to be able to filter those out, including auto-filter for Junior Researchers. You can help me speed up that process by submitting any warning information you feel should be added through our Connect form. I appreciate your help!
share:
The Untold History of the Tuscaroras Who Remained in North Carolina
Zotero for Genealogy: Harnessing the Power of Your Research
DNA USA: A Genetic Portrait of America
History of the Early Settlement and Indian Wars of Western Virginia
Race, Removal, and the Right to Remain: Migration and the Making of the United States
The Farfarers: A New History of North America
Smoky Mountain Mysteries: Stories About Magnificent Mountains Unique People
Appalachian Elegy: Poetry and Place
Melungeon Voices S5 E1 – Southern & Appalachian Folk Medicine
1870 U.S. Census – District 11, Hancock County, Tennessee
The Invisible Line: Three American Families and the Secret Journey from Black to WhiteMelungeon Voices S2 E3 – LaTonya Beatty
Adventures in the Gene Pool
An Introduction to the Guineas: West Virginia’s Melungeons
Analysis of a Tri-Racial Isolate
The Catawba Indians: The People of the River
Native American DNA: Tribal Belonging and the False Promise of Genetic Science
Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II
We Are the Middle of Forever: Indigenous Voices from Turtle Island on the Changing Earth
Melungeon Voices S5 E5 – Overcoming Generational Trauma and Melungeon Resilience
The Lost Colony of Roanoke: New Perspectives
Native Women’s History in Eastern North America before 1900: A Guide to Researching and Writing
Erasures of the Past: Culture, Power, and Heterogeneity in Appalachia
Ancient Ocean Crossings: Reconsidering the Case for Contacts with the Pre-Columbian Americas
Swift’s Silver Mines and Related Appalachian Treasures
Cherokee Women: Gender and Culture Change, 1700-1835
The Forgotten Portuguese: The Melungeons and Other Groups
A Study of Tri-Racial Isolates in Eastern United States
Conquering the Pacific: An Unknown Mariner and the Final Great Voyage of the Age of Discovery
Making Indians “White”: The Judicial Abolition of Native Slavery in Revolutionary Virginia and Its Racial Legacy
King’s Mountain Men: The Story of the Battle with Sketches of the Soldiers Who Took Part
Ossman & Steel’s Classic Household Guide to Appalachian Folk Healing: A Collection of Old-Time Remedies, Charms, and Spells
American Migration Routes, Part 1: Indian Paths, Post Roads & Wagon Roads
Wildflowers and Ferns of Kentucky
Native Carolinians: The Indians of North Carolina
The Portuguese Making of America: Melungeons and Early Settlers of AmericaMelungeon Voices S3 E1 – Ramona Moore Big Eagle
First Peoples: A Documentary Survey of American Indian History
Melungeons: Footprints From the PastMelungeon Voices S4 E3 – Joshua Outsey
Kentucky Folklore
Southern Folk Medicine 1750-1820
Arts and Crafts of the CherokeeMelungeon Voices S4 E5 – Melinda Trueblood Stimpson
Daughter of the Legend
Tracing Your Ancestors Using DNA: A Guide for Family Historians
The Forgotten Centuries: Indians and Europeans in the American South 1521-1704
“Mixed Blood” Indians: Racial Construction in the Early South
Carolina in Crisis: Cherokees, Colonists, and Slaves in the American Southeast, 1756-1763
Alliances: Re/Envisioning Indigenous-Non-indigenous Relationships
Sorry You Missed It: Memoirs of Growing Up in an Eastern Kentucky Coal Camp
The Southeastern Indians
Out of the Woods
Snowbird Cherokees: People of Persistence
1619 – Twenty Africans: Their Story, and Discovery of Their Black, Red, & White Descendants
Voices from the North Carolina Mountains: Appalachian Oral Histories
Roots, Branches & Spirits: The Folkways & Witchery of AppalachiaMelungeon Voices S2 E7 – Dr. Arwin SmallwoodMelungeon Voices S3 E6 – Gabriel Greaves
Up Cutshin & Down Greasy: Folkways of a Kentucky Mountain Family
Through the Back Door: Melungeon Literacies and Twenty-First Century Technologies
1800 U.S. Census – Morgan Twp, Ashe County, North CarolinaMelungeon Voices S5 E7 – Melungeon and Redbone Ancestral Connections
Melungeon Voices
Melungeon Portraits: Lived Experience and Identity
Indigenous Continent: The Epic Contest for North America
Race Relations in Virginia and Miscegenation in the South 1776–1860
1830 U.S. Census – Hawkins County, Tennessee
The Mind of the South
The Cherokee Diaspora: An Indigenous History of Migration, Resettlement, and Identity
A Land So Strange: The Epic Journey of Cabeza de Vaca
My Melungeon Heritage: A Story of Life on Newman’s RidgeMelungeon Voices S3 E2 – Mike Richards + Tim Webb
“What Ain’t Called Melungeons is Called Hillbillies”: Southern Appalachia’s In-Between People
Early Families of Eastern and Southeastern Kentucky
1860 U.S. Census – Panther Creek, Hancock County, Tennessee
Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped AmericaMelungeon Voices S3 E3 – Katya Faris
A Question of Indian Identity in the Plecker Era: The Monacan Indian Nation in the Twentieth Century
Wise County Virginia
Housekeeping in Old Virginia
All Our Relations: Native Struggles for Land and Life
The Catawba Nation
“We Are Still Here”: American Indians Since 1890
A Note on the Melungeons
Creek Indian History: A Historical Narrative of the Genealogy, Traditions and Downfall of the Ispocoga or Creek Indian Tribe
Footsteps of the Cherokees: A Guide to the Eastern Homelands of the Cherokee Nation
Ancestral Lineage Healing
Melungeon History and Myth
Appalachian Reckoning: A Region Responds to Hillbilly Elegy
Unravelling the Hidden Ancestry of American Admixed Populations
We’re Still Here: Contemporary Virginia Indians Tell Their Stories
Unofficial Guide to FamilySearch.org: How to Find Your Family History on the World’s Largest Free Genealogy Website
1820 U.S. Census – Floyd County, KentuckyMelungeon Voices S4 E2 – Dr. Kathy Lyday
Sustainable Genealogy: Separating Fact from Fiction in Family Legends
Litigating Whiteness: Trials of Racial Determination in the Nineteenth-Century South
Boone Before Boone: The Archaeological Record of Northwestern North Carolina Through 1769
Sang Branch Settlers: Folksongs and Tales of a Kentucky Mountain Family
North from the Mountains: A Folk History of the Carmel Melungeon Settlement, Highland County, Ohio
Cherokee Americans: The Eastern Band of Cherokees in the Twentieth Century
Exploring Your Cherokee Ancestry: A Basic Genealogical Research Guide
Outwitting the Devil: Jack Tales from Wise County Virginia
1850 U.S. Census – Subdivision 32, Hancock County, Tennessee
The Sleuth Book for Genealogists: Strategies for More Successful Family History Research
Land: How the Hunger for Ownership Shaped the Modern World
The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek
Ancestors and Enemies: Essays on Melungeons
Survey of Demography, Anthropometry, and Genetics in the Melungeons of Tennessee: An Isolate of Hybrid Origin in Process of Dissolution
Colonial-Era Wool Production + Buckskins & Hog Slaughters
The Foxfire Book of Appalachian Women: Stories of Landscape and Community in the Mountain South
Blurring the Lines of Race & Freedom: Mulattoes & Mixed Bloods in English Colonial America
The Other Side of the Coin: Race, Generations and Reconciliation
Arrival of the First Africans in Virginia
Southern Communities: Identity, Conflict, and Memory in the American South
How They Shine: Melungeon Characters in the Fiction of Appalachia
Black in Appalachia S1 E10 – Melungeons
Wildflowers and Ferns of Red River Gorge and the Greater Red River Basin
La Florida: Spanish Exploration & Settlement in North America, 1500 to 1600
1850 U.S. Census – Subdivision 33, Hancock County, Tennessee
Trees & Shrubs of Kentucky
Me and White Supremacy: Combat Racism, Change the World, and Become a Good Ancestor
The 1619 Project: A New Origin StoryMelungeon Memories Project
Origin Traditions of American Racial Isolates: A Case of Something Borrowed
Melungeons, A Multi-Ethnic Population
Witchcraft in Colonial Virginia
1840 U.S. Census – Hawkins County, TennesseeMelungeon Voices S2 E4 – William Isom II
Becoming Melungeon: Making an Ethnic Identity in the Appalachian South
Children of Perdition: Melungeons and the Struggle of Mixed America
The Five Civilized Tribes: Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, Seminole
Black Drink: A Native American Tea
Divide and Rule: Red, White, and Black in the Southeast
Ancestral Medicine: Rituals for Personal and Family HealingMelungeon Voices S5 E4 – Melungeon & Maroon Communities and the Underground Railroad
1850 U.S. Census – Morgan County, Kentucky
Red, White & Black: The Peoples of Early North America
Mixing in the Mountains
Lest We Forget: The Melungeon Colony of Newman’s Ridge
Melungeon Portraits: Exploring Kinship and Identity
The Seven Daughters of Eve: The Science That Reveals Our Genetic Ancestry
Old Greasybeard: Tales from the Cumberland Gap
Our Side of the Mountain
Becoming Kin: An Indigenous Call to Unforgetting the Past and Reimagining Our Future
History for Genealogists
Ascribed Ethnicity and the Ethnic Display Event: The Melungeons of Hancock County, Tennessee
Native Southerners: Indigenous History from Origins to Removal
Africans and Native Americans: The Language of Race and the Evolution of Red-Black Peoples
The Lambert Tapes, Volume Three: Cherokee HistoryMelungeon Voices S4 E1 – Kiran Singh Sirah
Earth Medicine: Ancestors’ Ways of Harmony for Many Moons
The Unforeseen Wilderness: Kentucky’s Red River Gorge
Trace Your Roots with DNA: Using Genetic Tests to Explore Your Family Tree
Melungeons: The Last Lost Tribe in America
Gibson Family Genealogy: A Melungeon LineMelungeon Voices S1 E6 – Sonja Griffin Evans
Ties That Bind: The Story of an Afro-Cherokee Family in Slavery and Freedom
GodPretty in the Tobacco Field
Washed in the Blood
The Everything Guide to Online Genealogy: Trace Your Roots, Share Your History, and Create a Family Tree
Living Indian Histories: Lumbee and Tuscarora People in North Carolina
History of Kentucky, Volume 1
Black Indian Genealogy Research
Far Appalachia: Following the New River North
The Melungeon Identity Movement and the Construction of Appalachian Whiteness
Genetic Genealogy: The Basics and Beyond
Emerging Paradigms in Critical Mixed Race StudiesMelungeon Voices S1 E3 – Bill Gipson
Mysterious Kentucky, Vol. 2: The Dark and Bloody Ground
Catawba Nation: Treasures in History
A Church Book for Stony Creek Church
A History of the United States: The Planting of a Nation in the New World, 1000 – 1660
They Came Before Columbus: The African Presence in Ancient America
A Panel of Ancestry Informative Markers for Estimating Individual Biogeographical Ancestry and Admixture From Four Continents: Utility and Applications
A History of Blacks in Kentucky from Slavery to Segregation, 1760-1891
Final Report of the United States De Soto Expedition Commission
1870 U.S. Census – Paintsville, Johnson County, Kentucky
A Peculiar People: The Melungeons
Free Negro Owners of Slaves in 1830
First Families of Tennessee: A Register of Early Settlers and Their Present-Day DescendantsMelungeon Voices S2 E1 – Kimberly Knight
1870 U.S. Census – Barnett’s Creek, Johnson County, Kentucky
Belonging: A Culture of Place
Madoc’s Legacy
South from Hell-fer-Sartin: Kentucky Mountain Folk Tales
New People: Miscegenation and Mulattoes in the United States
Mountain Passages: Natural and Cultural History of Western North Carolina and the Great Smoky Mountains
The Lost Colony and Hatteras Island
Research Like a Pro With DNA: A Genealogist’s Guide to Finding and Confirming Ancestors With DNA Evidence
Kinfolks: Falling Off the Family Tree
DNA for Native American GenealogyMelungeon Voices S1 E2 – Beverly Scarlett
The ‘Twenty and Odd’: The Silences of Africans in Early Virginia Revealed
1880 U.S. Census – District 91, Hancock County, Tennessee
The Foxfire Book of Appalachian CookeryMelungeon Voices S1 E5 – Robert WellsMelungeon Voices S1 E7 – Wayne Winkler
Tracing Your Ancestors from 1066 to 1837: A Guide for Family Historians
Greenbrier County, West Virginia: Reprinted from Early Historical Writings
Myths of the Cherokee
Ginseng Diggers: A History of Root and Herb Gathering in AppalachiaMelungeon Voices S4 E7 – Dr. Jose Pimienta-BeyMelungeon Voices S4 E6 – Scott Withrow
Evidence Explained: Citing History Sources from Artifacts to Cyberspace
Greenbrier Pioneers and Their Homes
King’s Mountain: The Epic of the Blue Ridge “Mountain Men” in the American Revolution
Revealing America’s Dark-Skinned Past, Vol. 2: The Columbian Era
Research Like a Pro: A Genealogist’s Guide
The Melungeons: A Mixed-Blood Strain of the Southern Appalachians
Melungeons and Other Mestee Groups
The Melungeons: The Pioneers of the Interior Southeastern United States 1526-1997Melungeon Voices S3 E5 – Janeen Stephens
Eastern Cherokee Stories: A Living Oral Tradition and Its Cultural Continuance
We Talk, You Listen: New Tribes, New Turf
A Kingdom Strange: The Brief and Tragic History of the Lost Colony of Roanoke
Taking Up Serpents: Snake Handlers of Eastern Kentucky
Southern Folk Medicine: Healing Traditions from the Appalachian Fields and ForestsThe Graysville Melungeons: A Tri-Racial People in Lower East Tennessee
The Indelible Appalachians
We Are All Catawba: Complete Genealogy of My Daddy’s Catawba Ancestors
Mother of Rain
Eugenics as Indian Removal: Sociohistorical Processes and the De(con)struction of American Indians in the Southeast
Virginia Wills and Administrations 1632-1800
Slavery and the Evolution of Cherokee Society, 1540-1866
1830 U.S. Census – Floyd County, Kentucky
Pocahontas’s People: The Powhatan Indians of Virginia through Four Centuries
Sifters: Native American Women’s Lives
Catawba, Saponi, Melungeon
The Lambert Tapes, Volume Two: Cherokee History
Windows on the Past: The Cultural Heritage of Vardy
A Wandering Tribe: Dispersal of the Catawba Nation in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
Voicing Identity: Cultural Appropriation and Indigenous Issues
The MelungeonsMelungeon Voices S4 E4 – Aaron Collins
A History of Portugal and the Portuguese Empire, Vol. 1: Portugal
1820 U.S. Census – Prestonsburg, Floyd County, Kentucky
Erasure & Tuscarora Resilience in Colonial North Carolina
A Darkness at Dawn: Appalachian Kentucky and the Future
The Secret Token: Myth, Obsession, and the Search for the Lost Colony of Roanoke
The Physical Anthropology and Genetics of Marginal People of the Southeastern United States
Revealing America’s Dark-Skinned Past, Vol. 1
Generation by Generation: A Modern Approach to the Basics of Genealogy
American Colonies: The Settling of North America
Jewish Morocco: A History from Pre-Islamic to Postcolonial Times
A Geographic Analysis of White-Negro-Indian Racial Mixtures in Eastern United States
History of the American Frontier 1763-1893
The Mixed-Blood Racial Strain of Carmel, Ohio, and Magoffin County, KentuckyMelungeon Voices S5 E3 – Discovering Melungeon & Indigenous Ancestry
Farming While Black: Soul Fire Farm’s Practical Guide to Liberation on the Land
History of Pioneer Kentucky
Wisdom’s Daughter’s: Conversations with Women Elders of Native America
Compilation of History of the Cherokee Indians and Early History of the CherokeesThe Melungeons: Red, Black and White in the Old South
The Melungeons of Newman’s Ridge: An Insider’s Perspective
The Birth of Black America: The First African Americans and the Pursuit of Freedom at Jamestown
Living Stories of the Cherokee
How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America
In the Hands of the Great Spirit: The 20,000 Year History of American Indians
Our Mountain Heritage: Ancestors from Southwest Virginia (Including Edwards, Wright, Hay, Colley, Deel)
Beyond the Sunset: The Melungeon Outdoor Drama, 1969-1976
Researchers Tackle Mystery of the Melungeons
Joara: Tale of the New World, 1566 – 1568
The Scotch-Irish: A Social History
Hillbilly Women: Mountain Women Speak of Struggle and Joy in Southern AppalachiaMelungeon Voices S2 E5 – Onur Kaya
The Only Land I Know: A History of the Lumbee IndiansMelungeon Voices S1 E4 – Paul Johnson
Measurement of Race and Ethnicity Across the Decades: 1790–2020
Melungeons: The Vanishing Colony of Newman’s Ridge
The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History
White Servitude in the Colony of Virginia: A Study of the System of Indentured Labor in the American ColoniesThe Many Faces of Melungeon Ancestry
Carolina Genesis: Beyond the Color Line
Forbidden Love: The Secret History of Mixed-Race America
Our Southern Highlanders: A Narrative of Adventure in the Southern Appalachians and a Study of Life Among the Mountaineers
Kentucky Genealogical Research
The Highland Clans
The Complexities of Native Identity in America
The Indians’ New World: Catawbas and Their Neighbors from European Contact Through the Era of Removal
Cherokee Ancestry Resource Guide
The Juan Pardo Expeditions: Explorations of the Carolinas and Tennessee, 1566-1568
Pioneer Families of Eastern and Southeastern KentuckyMelungeon Voices S5 E2 – “Generations: An Indigenous Exhibit”
Unsettling Truths: The Ongoing, Dehumanizing Legacy of the Doctrine of DiscoveryMelungeon Ties
1860 U.S. Census – Division 2, Morgan County, Kentucky
An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States
Researching Scots-Irish Ancestors: The Essential Genealogical Guide to Early Modern Ulster, 1600-1800
Settler Memory: The Disavowal of Indigeneity and the Politics of Race
The Electronic Front Porch: An Oral History of the Arrival of Modern Media in Rural Appalachia and the Melungeon Community
The American South as We Know It
Melungeons: Examining an Appalachian Legend
Letcher County (Images of America)
Power in the Blood: A Family Narrative
A History of the Valley of Virginia
Race, Roots, and Relations: Native and African Americans
Singing Down the Preacher
Some Superstitions in the Cumberland Mountains
The Melungeons: Notes on the Origin of a Race
Melungeons Yesterday and Today
Yuchi Indian Histories Before the Removal Era
1840 U.S. Census – Morgan County, KentuckyAdvanced Views (view_66bbff5e44aa2) template: Can't write template file
The Cherokee Ghost Dance
The Melungeons: An Annotated Bibliography
Mountain Conjure and Southern Root Work
Eastern Band Cherokee Women: Cultural Persistence in Their Letters and Speeches
Tending the Bones
Knights of Spain, Warriors of the Sun: Hernando De Soto and the South’s Ancient Chiefdoms
Toward a Genetic Profile of Melungeons in Southern AppalachiaMelungeon Voices S2 E6 – Lauren Magnussen
1790 U.S. Census – Wilkes County, North Carolina
From Anatolia to Appalachia: A Turkish-American DialogueMelungeon Voices S2 E2 – Jake Richards
Our Roots Run Deep as Ironweed: Appalachian Women and the Fight for Environmental Justice
Santa Elena: A Brief History of the Colony, 1566-1587
Lee County, Virginia: History Revealed Through Biographical and Genealogical Sketches of Its Ancestors
The Indian Card: Who Gets to be Native in America
Appalachian Magazine’s Mountain Superstitions, Ghost Stories & Haint Tales
The Drifters: A Christian Historical Novel About the Melungeon Shantyboat People
Map Guide to American Migration Routes, 1735-1815
Strangers in Their Midst: The Free Black Population of Amherst County Virginia
The Narrative of Cabeza de Vaca
An Overview of the Phenomenon of Mixed Racial Isolates in the United States
The Buffalo Ridge Cherokee: A Remnant of a Great Nation Divided
Hollows, Peepers, and Highlanders: An Appalachian Mountain EcologyMelungeon Voices S5 E6 – At-Risk Populations of Appalachia & Southern U.S.
Scots and Scotch Irish: Frontier Life in North Carolina, Virginia, and Kentucky
Directory of Scots Banished to the American Plantations, 1650-1775
Demon Copperhead
Conquerors: How Portugal Forged the First Global Empire
Your DNA Guide – the Book
Reading Early American Handwriting
The Last Storytellers: Tales from the Heart of MoroccoMelungeon Voices S3 E4 – Ron Carson
Almost White: A Study of Certain Racial Hybrids in the Eastern United States
1830 U.S. Census – Morgan County, KentuckyMelungeon Voices S3 E7 – Dr. Melissa Carver
Recovering the Sacred: The Power of Naming and Claiming
The Melungeons of Newman’s Ridge: A Portfolio of Portraits