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Hello Saponi Town
My name is Joe. My Father was from Wise Virginia, and his family was among the first to settle there. I got serious about researching my family history about six months ago. The research has pretty much consumed all of my down time since it began. I was always told we were mixed blood, mostly Irish, Scotch, English and Indian. About eight years ago is when I first read the word Melungeon, after googling my great Grandfathers name (John “Hop” Mullins) and location. I asked my Dad if he had ever heard anything about his forefathers being Spanish, Mediterranean, Portuguese or from lost sailors and he said no. I guess, I’m kinda lucky because there was already so much research done on my family but a lot of it is misinformation. I figured the best thing to do was start with my Father and work outwards, building his pedigree, and try to research every person along the way. I’ve done enough now to formulate my own opinion, shared by some, that my Fathers ancestors came to Virginia as servants (slaves really) and mixed with, or at the very least, intermingled with the Native slaves early on. They started migrating west after the African slaves arrived and the area they settled in became somewhat of a hide-out for other mixed bloods over the next century and a half or so. My Fathers pedigree seems to reflect this with connections to the Shawnee, Saponi, Chowan and Cherokee, and of course most of these connections come with some controversy but I’m happy to share any info I have because I have taken so much from here.
As far as my best known Saponi connection, that would be through Benjamin Bolling 1734-1832. Benjamin’s Granddaughter is my 4th great Grandmother (Virginia Short). She married Dave Mullins, (some call him spotted Dave). Also Benjamin’s sister (Mary Agnes Bolling-Baker) is my 6th great Grandmother through my 3rd great Grandfathers wife.
I have several other matching Saponi surnames still needing research
Heya Joe. Welcome to Saponitown. My guess would be many different related drops.
The deeper I researched my families, the more mixed bloods I found. Vitually every line on my mother’s side and every line on my father’s side have been mixed bloods marrying mixed bloods for 400 years. It boggles the mind until you realize that colonial VA laws gave known mixed bloods no option but to marry mixed or black. This is a good thing, though, because it kept the ndn blood strong.
Again, welcome home.
Hey Katfish, I got family out of Wise, Va. Mullins, Bolling…those are names associated with mixed bloods from there…. Lord knows, we may be cousins!
And speaking of cousins..Howdy Dreaminghawk, long time no chat cuz! Darned straight about the mixed bloods, I have the same result.
Once the mixed bloods started intermarrying, they never stopped. Its almost as if there were several classes of people in Va/NC then..whites that only married whites, dark skinned folks..ie blacks and full blood NDS..that married other dark skinned folk, and then mixed bloods that married mixed bloods..they were never to dark, but never to light. At least thats how it appeared with my family.
Any thoughts?
Dreaminghawk;37120 wrote: Heya Joe. Welcome to Saponitown. My guess would be many different related drops.
The deeper I researched my families, the more mixed bloods I found. Vitually every line on my mother’s side and every line on my father’s side have been mixed bloods marrying mixed bloods for 400 years. It boggles the mind until you realize that colonial VA laws gave known mixed bloods no option but to marry mixed or black. This is a good thing, though, because it kept the ndn blood strong.
Again, welcome home.
It has been said that everybody is surely born somewhere or have realitives from some where but those with divine providence have ancestry from Virginia. Just a little ancestry humor here.
Virginia is for lovers 😉 and for the first 100 years those colonists that spread out from the James River were loving a lot of ndn brides. The history books say very little about the 1600 to 1700 timeframe. That’s like skipping 1900 to 2000. A lot happened in that 100 years.
Tonya::: Becky and I think about you a lot. Can’t wait until you get a chance to come back to the east coast…. don’t look like we’ll ever get to make that trip west we want to take. Just read an article/pictorial on the 13 year old female Mongolian eagle hunter and thought about you. Did you get to make that trip to study with the eagle hunters?
Don’t mean to hijack thread but anybody with ancestors from VA……. we probably cousins 😉
Thanks for the welcome!
You are correct Dreaminghawk, many different related drops.
Hey Spilleddi, like Dreaminghawk said, “with ancestors from VA we probably cousins”, with ancestors from Wise, it’s almost a guarantee!
When history isn’t covered up or ignored, it’s very skewed and distorted, from the mainstream sources anyways..
Afternoon Folks,
I felt reassured about what was really going on within the new colony here in Virginia when I ran across this letter some years ago, confirming that the English were in fact practicing assimilation with the Natives, which we already knew and suspected.
Philip the III, the King of Spain received a letter on August 1, 1612 from the Marquis of Flores in reference to some Settlers of Jamestowne-
“Some of the people who have gone there, think now some of them should marry the women of the savages of that country; and he tells me that there are already 40 or 50 thus married.” Also reported that the other Englishmen, after being put among them, have become savages themselves while the women, whom they took out, also have gone among the savages where they have been received & treated well. A minister who admonished them was “seriously wounded in many places” because “he reprehended them”
(Harbury, 2006 (quoting Brown, 1964), http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/jame1/moretti-langholtz/chap10a.htm).
Although this letter from the Marquis of Flores is not the romantic story of John Rolfe and Pocahontas, it demonstrates that some of the other English “Adventurers” were also taking Native American brides.
Regards,
Four Cats
Thank you, Four Cats for posting that letter.
Jamestown was a “for profit” colony. Initially, only men were in the colony. The first European women (they didn’t fare well and many returned to England within a year), first children(street urchins rounded up in London and other cities to be indentured servants. My Henry Newton arrived in 1621), and first African slaves(actually the first Africans were treated like any other indentured servants with freedom granted after a certain period of servitude) would not arrive until 1619.
To see that 40 to 50 of the first arrivals had taken ndn wives by 1612 helps us make a strong case that the early intermarrying among the native population and the colonists in VA/NC was MUCH more common than most people believe. It must have been common enough that in 1703 the VA colony made it against the law for a known white to marry an Indian. By that time, that was a very subjective judgement with so many mixed bloods living so many different lifestyles and classes. This is when the mixed blood migration to the interior piedmont began and from there to points west and south.
Forgot the most important reason for so many marriages in the early years of VA colony…. obviously companionship, but more importantly,when the colonists comprehended that the east coast nations were matrilineal, they knew that if you control the women, you control the land. Simple economics.
Derailing again……. Tanya, just wanted you to know that I have shared your advice on what to do in bear country several hundred times and got several thousand laughs….. then they realize it is really good survival advice………. (go with someone who you can outrun >;-)
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