Portuguese Settlement

Came across some info on this Portuguese Settlement….I left the author’s name off, but if they would like to share more, I would be very interested. When I am in the area, I plan on doing some research.

There is a small remnant community [of Saponi Indians] still in existence across the State line in Northampton County near the town of Gaston on the Roanoke River. Even this community, called the “Portuguese Settlement” throughout much of the 19th and 20th centuries, has largely dispersed. Up into the 1950’s, however, at least one of the community’s schools, called the “Portuguese” school, was still located in Greensville County.

. . . The group began a concerted effort to conduct research into their history, and to seek to correct the racial mis-classifications on their birth certificates and other official documents that resulted from Jim Crow and other racist laws that had at one time been on North Carolina’s books. . .

reply — This Indian mixed/race community was once called “Portuguese” on birth certificates and census records BECAUSE OF THE JIM CROW LAWS. Some were also mixed Black

2. The 1790 census does not list the race of the heads of household in Orange County. Both Whitmores are listed in 1830 as “Free Negro Heads of Households” along with numerous Jeffrieses, Corns, Burnettes, Haithcocks, Joneses, and others for the North District of Orange County. This “Free Negro” list also enumerates nearly all the families that were ancestral to present-day Indian communities in other parts of North Carolina such as the Lumbee, Coharie, and Meherrin. Their uncertain racial status resulted in 13 separate court cases involving members of the Jeffries or related families.

reply — many families were mislabeled as “Negro” who were in fact mixed-race, mixed with Virginia’s Indian population.

3. Four persons gave depositions; three of them appear to have been white while the fourth, Shadrack Jeffries, was an Indian and a relative of William Jeffries. All agreed that: (1) Jeffries mother was of Indian and white ancestry; (2) she was born in Northampton County, North Carolina, near the Virginia line; (3) she did not associate with blacks; (4) his father was Macklin Jeffries, of Greensville County, Virginia; and (5) Macklin Jeffries was a mixed-blood Indian. The testimony of Susan Wooten is particularly interesting in that she states that “Jeffries’ mother associated with White people and those who had Indian blood with regard to her Indian blood.

Other local histories refer to the Indian blood of the Jeffrieses. R. F. Dill’s History of Greene County, Ohio (Dill 1881) contains short biographies of prominent persons, and gives the following information about James Jeffries: “James Jeffries, Furniture Manufacturer . . . was born in Greenville County, Virginia, January 30, 1821 . . . son of Silas and Susan (Pruitt) Jeffries. Silas was a descendant of the Catawba tribe of Indians.” Similar information is given for Mason Jeffries, son of Uriah Jeffries, of Greensville County, Virginia, who is also said to be a descendant of the Catawba tribe.

reply — these folks had to go to court to PROVE they were not Negro. This explains why some said they were Portuguese as well.

second reply to same quote — They are said to be Catawba. Catawba spoke the same language as the Saponi and during times of trouble the Saponi ran to the protection of the Catawba.

4. In 1904, the Eastern Band of Cherokee won a settlement with the U.S. government based on violations of earlier treaties. This meant that thousands of persons of Eastern Cherokee ancestry were eligible for part of the settlement, and many of these people applied to the U.S. Court of Claims for a share (Jordan 1987-1990). It is interesting to read these applications, since a significant percentage of applicants were not Eastern Cherokee, but members of other tribes. These persons would now be identified as Lumbee, Alabama Creek, Meherrin, Haliwa, and Occaneechi (Saponi), along with a number of individuals who probably were of unmixed white or black ancestry.

At least 20 Occaneechi descendants also applied; all were rejected by the commission as not being of Eastern Cherokee ancestry. Among these were Aaron Thomas Guy, born in Caswell County, North Carolina, the son of Henry Guy and grandson of Henry Guy. Henry Guy, Sr., was the brother of Richard Guy, Buckner Guy, and others who moved to Macon County, North Carolina, from the Texas community in the 1820s. Aaron Guy stated that his mother was a free woman of color, born free and raised by the Quakers in Guilford County, North Carolina. There is also testimony from a former slave who knew Henry Guy, Jr., to the effect that he was an Indian, married to a colored woman. Aaron Guy was living in Indiana at the time of his application.

William and Joe Gibson, from Murphy, North Carolina, applied, and the note “Probably Negros” was written on their application. William Gibson stated that his parents “passed as part Indian. No Negro blood in them.” He further stated that his father spoke the Indian language. On the bottom of his testimony is a note, presumably written by the agent, which says, “This applicant shows the Indian so does his brother now with him. However, their ancestors were never enrolled.” These Gibsons, who lived at various times in Tennessee and North Carolina, probably were also related to the Gibsons found in the so-called Melungeon groups of eastern Tennessee and western Virginia, which appear to have originated in the early mixed-blood populations of the North Carolina Piedmont area.

reply — There are 20 PROVEN descendants of the Occoneechi Indians who DID APPLY for the Miller-Dawes rolls of the Cherokee found East of the Mississippi. This explains what I have been saying about those who applied for Miller-Dawes Rolls and were REJECTED — some were rejected NOT because they were not Indian, but because they were NOT Cherokee! If only researchers would BELIEVE what the Cherokee have ALWAYS said, researching their families might get over the hump and they wuld FINALLY understand — but as long as people refure to believe the Cherokee, their own family genealogical research will be retarded and muddled. Many are PROVEN to have been PROVEN to have been descended from those sometimes called “Piedmont Catawba.

5. The Bethany School

The Portuguese Settlement

In the northwest section of Northampton County, North Carolina, just a mile or two from the Virginia state line, lie the fading remnants of what was once called the “Portuguese” Settlement. Centered in Gaston Township, along the Roanoke River , this community of Poythresses, Basses, Turners, Scotts, Newsoms, and Peterses had it’s own school, Bethany, and it’s own church, run as a mission by a white Gaston congregation. At least one store in the community was owned by a member of the group.

While local legend has it that these people descend from Portuguese workers brought in to work on the dam on the Roanoke, the family names cane be traced back well into the late 18th Century in the area. Their ancestry is almost certainly Indian, from either or both the Saponi and the Nottoway. Several of the Scotts who moved from the area to South Carolina obtained papers attesting to their Indian ancestry after they arrived in Sumpter County.

So — There was a so-called “Portuguese Settlement” later found at the VERY LOCATION of the early day (Colonial) of Fort Christ-Anna, on the Va/NC border. Fort Christ-Anna was the location these Piedmont Catawba were ALL sent to live. These Indians later mixed with run away slaves and Whites, and to escape the Jim Crow laws, later called themselves “Portuguese”.

6. This school, formerly a Black school, was apparently used as a school for the “Portuguese” residing in Greensville County until the late 1950’s. The Turners were the most well-known family of the group in Greensville, described by some of the whites as “gypsy-looking”, and remaining separate from both white and Blacks in the area. Douglas Summers Brown’s papers contain brief notes on the Indian background of the Turners.