Untitled - Panther's Lodge

264 Pages·2013·12.17 MB·English

Ancestors and
Enemies

PHYLLIS E. STARNES and
DONALD N. YATES

With Eighteen Original Illustrations

Panther's Lodge
PHOENIX
ISBN: 0615906893
ISBN-13: 978-0615906898

Copyright © 2013 Phyllis E. Starnes and Donald N. Yates
All rights reserved.
CONTENTS

You Might Be Melungeon If iii
1 Strange Genes in Appalachia 1
2 Don Quixote and Senor Eggplant 23
3 Shalom, Y'all 51
4 You Will Never Find Out the Truth 75
5 Crazy Quilt Ancestry 97
6 Who'da Thunk It 109
7 Influence of Sephardic Jews and Moors on
Southeastern Indians 125
8 Return to Judaism 141
9 Indians and Crypto-Jews 151
10 Cyberfeud on the Ridge 165
11 Where Did All the Money Go 191
12 Dying Campfires 221
Suggested Readings 240

ILLUSTRATIONS

Granny Dollar frontispiece
Blevins cousin ii
He claimed to have both Jewish and
Scottish ancestry x
Oddly our church had a star of David 22
"Oh, they're all fled with thee, Robin
Adair!" 50
Gomez with the Indians 74
Julia 96
Stech-Tcha-kó-me-co, Great King
(called Ben Perryman), a chief 108
The old chief and his assistant gave us
a fraternal handshake 124
I should have known, since my
grandmother's name was
Palestine 140
Gone home 150
Ruck Sizemore – the last Chickamauga
medicine man 164
Peter had a wooden leg and Malina
was a midwife 190
Mingo in "Daniel Boone" 220

CREDITS
frontispiece The Bear Went over the Mountain, p. 223, from
Alton Beason's barbershop wall, Fort Payne, Alabama. ii
unidentified granddaughter of Richard Blevins. viii
Eliyah Skeans from Brian Hall. 16 church for sale in
Oliver, Georgia. 16 nineteenth-century songbook. 50
melungeons.com. 66 Julia Starnes. 74 George Caitlin. 98
John Wesley Monroe Dolphus Cooper, his wife Dovey
Palestine and their baby, Bessie Louise, 1918. 106
Harmon Cooper tombstone, New Hope Cemetery. 116
from Chief Justice.
i