The long-time manager of the Powell Valley Electric Cooperative is the region's unofficial Melungeon expert, though he'd never admit to it. Soft-spoken and gentlemanly, Miner grew up on the side of Powell Mountain and spends a good deal of his time promoting the tri-state region of southwestern Virginia, uppereastern Tennessee, and southeastern Kentucky. His affection for the area and its people is obvious as he points with pride to well-kept homes and churches, the meandering Powell River-even the electrified outhouse standing in the woods beside the Primitive Baptist Church.
"I've always been interested in people's stories," Miner says. "I remember my daddy talking about the Melungeons, how they'd come down off Newman's Ridge and walk along the road single-file with the father in front and the mother in back and all the children in between. Know why they walked that way?" Smiling at my blank look, he suggests I think about how people walk on narrow, rocky mountain paths.
Miner says that until recently Melungeons suffered real discrimination. He recalls people's attitudes during the 1930s, when he was growing up.
"Part of it was racial - traditionally they had dark complexions, which set them apart. But it was their poverty too - as a group they were dirt-poor. And remember, we're talking about the Great Depression: nobody around here had any money."
Farther back in Tennessee history, the discrimination was legalized by ScotchIrish settlers, who in 1834 passed a law forbidding "free persons of color" to hold public office or vote. Melungeons could not ''bear witness" against a white man, rendering them powerless in most legal disputes. Yet, as Jean Patterson Bible points out in her 1975 book, "Melungeons Yesterday and Today," early 19th-century records list Melungeon names (Collins, Goins, Mullins, Gibson, Bowlin) among those owning slaves, paying taxes, making wills, bringing lawsuits - even voting. Perhaps the Melungeons' uncertain racial makeup worked in their favor occasionally, as clerks and judges struggled to determine just where they fit in Tennessee's racially restrictive legal system.
One fledgling Chattanooga lawyer made his career doing just that in 1872. In the celebrated Melungeon Case, the daughter of a Melungeon mother and a white father sought the assistance of Lewis Shepherd in claiming her inheritance. According to Tennessee's miscegenation law, which forbade the marriage of a person one-sixth or more "Negro" to a white person, the Melungeon 15-year-old was illegitimate and therefore not a legal heir. It fell to Shepherd to prove the girl was not Negro so that she could claim her fortune.
In his memoirs, Judge Shepherd recounts the case. Denying that the young woman was a "kinkyheaded" Negro, Shepherd instead set out to prove Melungeons' Phoenician ancestry. The ancient Carthaginians, he claimed, had emigrated to Portugal after their Roman defeat. Shepherd asserted that in the 1700s they crossed the Atlantic to North and South Carolina and then migrated inland to the Tennessee mountains. His trump card was the production of a perfectly straight, coal-black lock of hair pinned to the girl's deposition - proof positive, he claimed, that the Melungeon had no Negro blood in her veins.
Today the church and school stand empty, the paint peeling and stair railings tilting at odd angles. To reach the school, you walk through someone's turnip patch and up a steep hill. Renegade daffodils push through the tangled grass and catch the noonday sun.
"This is where the Melungeon children went to school starting in the early 1900s," Miner tells me. Taught by wellmeaning Presbyterian missionaries, Melungeon children received a healthy dose of religion with their schooling.
From 1920 to 1952, the school and church were faithfully served by Reverend and Mrs. Chester Leonard.
On down the road Miner points out a small white house. "That was Bill Grohse's place," he tells me. "Locked up in there are boxes and boxes of Melungeon records and artifacts. The man knew more about Melungeon history than anybody else when he died." A transplanted Yankee and German immigrant, Grohse married into Vardy Collins' family and spent his life gathering information about the Melungeons.
"That's the man I wish you could talk to," Miner says reverentially.
Currently, efforts are underway to purchase and renovate the old jail building in nearby Sneedville for use as a Melungeon archives repository. "It would be a tragedy if all this material scattered to the wind,'' Miner asserts.
"I never remember hearing about Melungeons when I was growing up," he states emphatically. "Sure, we lived off the land - we grew what we ate and all of that. But everybody did. I didn't hear the term Melungeon until the outdoor drama came to Sneedville in 1969.''
That play, "Walk Toward the Sunset," was by all measures a success, says Dr. John Lee Welton, head of nearby Carson-Newman College's drama department and the play' s director.
"In the late 1960s Hancock County was the eighth-poorest county in America,'' he says. The college's sociology and business departments put their heads together and got a small grant to study the area's economic development possibilities. Hancock County, they decided, had two things going for it: the stunning mountain scenery and the mysterious Melungeon. An outdoor drama seemed worth a try."
So, despite the fact that Sneedville had no motels, no fancy restaurants, and wasn't on the way to anywhere - there were no other tourist attractions in the area, and access to it was at best difficult - the area's movers and shakers formed the Hancock County Drama Association. Kermit Hunter, author of the highly successful Cherokee, North Carolina, outdoor production "Unto These Hills," was commissioned to write the play.
Welton believes the play, which ran for six summers, greatly improved people's understanding of the Melungeons.
"When we first went to Sneedville, very few area folks would admit to having Melungeon blood,'' he says. "Calling someone a Melungeon was like calling a Black a nxxxx. And we were outsiders, therefore suspicious. We decided to open up rehearsals to everyone, hoping to defuse some of the distrust. We also made a conscious effort to patronize every store in Sneedville, introducing ourselves as we paid for things.
"Gradually, some of the workmen came to us and, with a certain pride in their voices, told us that they had Melungeon blood. It was as if 'Walk Toward the Sunset' made it acceptable - maybe even desirable - to be Melungeon,'' Welton says.
Would it work again? Dr. Welton thinks not. "The late '60s was prime time for a story like 'Walk Toward the Sunset.' Americans were questioning racial stereotypes and bigotry, becoming conscious of nationality and ethnicity. All that's somewhat old news now."
Mahala Mullins (born a Collins in 1824) was famous on two counts: her enormity and her moonshine. Apparently the victim of elephantiasis, "Big Haley'' Mullins weighed anywhere from 350 to 600 pounds, depending on who was doing the telling. (Bearing 20 children must not have helped matters any.) Immobilized by her girth, Big Haley stayed in her house and directed production of what was reported to be some of the best moonshine in Appalachia.
"Remember," Miner says, "moonshining was everywhere in these mountains. Mahala's distilling in itself wasn't anything unusual. But apparently the apple brandy and corn liquor she produced was first quality, unadulterated and undiluted."
He stops the Blazer. "Look down there," he says, pointing out his window. "There's the Vardy settlement." I get out of the car and walk to a clearing, crossing a footpath paralleling the wagon road. At my feet is Snake Hollow, spread out 2,400 feet below like a narrow, deep trough. Looking down at the church and school, small white dots along the winding black road, I consider just what it is we're doing - bushwhacking our way along the edge of a steep mountain ridge. And all of a sudden I have a new understanding of the Melungeons' geographic isolation.
Just when the trace seems about to disappear, Miner pulls the Blazer into a clearing. Ahead sits Mahala Mullins' cabin and two outbuildings. Grayweathered, the buildings are still in good condition. Miner shows me the tobacco hangers in the lean-to barn and tells me that tobacco was the cash crop for many mountain people. In the smoke house he points to a long bench. "That's where they salted down their meat," he says. "Nobody in these parts actually smoked meat."
Around the two-story house briars tangle among fallen trees; the front porch is tenuous. I notice the wellcrafted arched windows: a curious touch of grace in what must have been hard lives. Inside the house, newspapers from the 1920s and '30s insulate and decorate the walls, forming a socio-historical collage. An old quilt lies torn in the farm room - along with beer cans and lots of graffiti. Miner tells me that Mahala Mullins' descendants are upset by the increased vandalism on the property, the result, they say, of recent publicity.
"We've been trying to buy this place, but the present owner won't sell or let anyone restore it," Miner says. ''There's a lot of history falling to pieces here.''
Stories of Mahala Mullins' life and death are as numerous as the wild iris about her grave. One is particularly quotable, dealing with Mahala's encounter with a wet-behind-the-ears sheriff. Legend has it that the young sheriff, looking for a quick route to glory, decided to jail Mahala for her moonshining. He made the trip up Newman's Ridge, knocked on her door, and served her an arrest warrant. Then the problem of getting her out of the house had to be solved. After some pondering and measuring, the sheriff went on down the mountain and back to the judge's chambers - alone. When the judge, a smile playing around his mouth, asked where his prisoner was, the young officer responded poetically, "She's ketchable, but not fetchable.''
Miner points to a crumbling chimney on the north end of the house. “Rumor has it that when Mahala died, she was carried out here. where the chimney is now. She was so big they sawed the legs off her bed, boxed it up like a coffin, carried her right out in it to the family cemetery.''
Mahala's grave went undetected for a hundred years, Melungeons not being ones to inscribe headstones routinely. Scott Collins claims to have found it one afternoon when exploring with another Mullins relation, Henry Swiney. He dug it up, brought it back to Sneedville and cleaned it, took a photograph of it, and carried it back up Newman's Ridge to the Mullins family plot, where he reburied it.
Miner shows me a large depression at the foot of a massive oak. ''This is where I think she's buried,'' he says, scraping away layers of leaves. "But that's just a guess.'' He looks back at the cabin wistfully. "All of this should be preserved there's so much about the Melungeons we don't know.''
And probably we never will. As those with Melungeon blood intermarry and move away from Newman's Ridge - become less Melungeon, in a sense there's simply less to study sociologically. Still, Melungeons are a fascinating link in the long chain of Appalachian history. And while the mystery of their early presence in the hills of southwest Virginia and northeastern Tennessee may not be solvable, their story is eminently tellable.
Joan Vannorsdall Schroeder wrote on the Virginia estate Swannanoa in the January/February issue. She lives with her family in Roanoke. Va.
Even more debated is Melungeons' racial makeup. Here are the main - all unproven - theories:
1. Members of the Roanoke Island Lost Colony? Did these English people move west and intermix with the Indians, evolving as did the Robeson County, N.C., Lumbees into a mixedblood group? Though the English dialect and surnames support this theory, traditional Melungeon appearance is more Mediterranean than English.
2. Descendants of 12th-century Welsh explorer Madoc? His exploring band ventured from what is now Mobile, Ala., into the hills of Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee and intermarried with native Indians. Melungeons, however, spoke English, not Welsh, dialect, and were darker-complected than the fair, blue-eyed Welsh.
3. The Lost Tribe of Israel? The discovery of the Hebrew Bar Kokhba coins in Kentucky dating back to 132-34 A.D., as well as the Metcalf and Bat Creek Stones bearing what some allege to be Semetic letters, point in this direction. However, one wonders just how the ancient Israelites might have crossed the Atlantic that early, and why more traces of their early American presence haven't been unearthed.
4. Descendants of ancient Carthaginians? Did Mediterranean people come to the New World 2,000 years before Columbus? Melungeon physical appearance supports this hypothesis best, but their English tongue and paucity of other evidence of Carthaginian colonization so early makes one wonder.
5. Are they Portugese? This is what Melungeons themselves have traditionally claimed, and what Melungeon authority Jean Bible suggests is most credible. Legend has it that a group of shipwrecked Portugese sailors migrated inland to Tennessee, where they intermixed with the native tribes. The Scotch-Irish settlers who came after the Revolutionary War lent their Anglican names and dialects.
Then there's the Melungeon folktale, probably developed as a tongue-incheek answer to the perpetual question, "Just where did you come from?"
Many years ago the Devil, better known in Newman's Ridge as Old Horney, was driven out of Hell by his nagging and domineering wife. He wandered over the earth from region to region and section to section. Eventually, he stumbled across the mountains of Tennessee which reminded him so much of his home that he decided to settle down. He then took himself a squaw for a wife and the race of Melungeons came from this union.
-from Beny Brewton's "Almost White"
Note: These archival articles are presented exactly as they appeared at the time of the issue in which they appeared. As such, all quotes, as well as references to temporal facts, artifacts and other items are contemporaneous to the date of original publication.