Dear Fellow Harvey Researchers: This weekend of I discovered the Melungeon people of Southeast Kentucky, North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, and Tennessee...a people in Appalachia whose very presence is a mystery. And, even more startling, I discovered that the surnames of Harvey and Harvie are among those considered common Melungeon Surnames. ( if you want more information on Melungeons, I have included below a bit of an email which I received from Ms. Nancy Sparks Morrison, A Genealogist in Virginia, as well as a link to a Melungeon Site. My Question? DOES ANYONE ON THE HARVEY LIST KNOW OF MELUNGEON HARVEYS? I am fascinated by this, and what started merely an interest in an appalachian mystery has suddenly become part of my Harvey research. I would be very interested to correspond with anyone with Melungeon Harvey information! Thanks, Ann Per Nancy Sparks Morrison, a Genealogist in Virginia: Are you familiar with the term Melungeon? If you answer, Who or what are Melungeons, you are like most people. If you have been researching your family in the Cumberland Plateau of Virginia, Kentucky, North Carolina, West Virginia, and Tennessee, during the early migration years, you may be able find them through a connection to this newly re-discovered group of people. The Melungeons are a people of apparent Mediterraneaan descent who may have settled in the Appalachian wilderness as early or possibly earlier than 1567. According to Dr. N. Brent Kennedy, the author of The Melungeons: The resurrection of a Proud People, the Melungeons werea people who almost certainly intermarried with Powhatans, Pamunkeys, Creeks, Catawbas, Yuchis, and Cherokees to form what some have called, perhaps a bit fancifully, a new race. The Melungeons were discovered in the Appalachian Mountains in 1654 by English explorers and were described as being dark-skinned with fine European features, (meaning they were not black) and as being a hairy people, who lived in log cabins with peculiar arched windows, (meaning they were not Indians). They practiced the Christian religion, and told the explorers in broken Elizabethan English, that they were Portyghee, but were described as being not white, that is, not of Northern European stock, even though some of them had red hair and others had VERY striking blue or blue/green eyes. This is something I had never heard of. I mean, I learned in school about the Lost Colony and Jamestown in 1607, Plymouth in 1620, with a few Spaniards and a smattering of Viking thrown in for good measure. Where did these people come from ? Recent research is answering that question. And it appears that they may be a combination of Turks, Spaniards, Portugese, Moor, Berber, Jew and Arab...... If your family has an Indian Grandmother(father) myth which you have been unable to prove, and they have been hard to trace and they lived in NC, TN, KY, VA, WV areas in the early migration years or if they seem to have moved back and forth in these areas and if they share any of the mentioned surnames and characteristics, you may find a connection here. Some descendants do not show the physical characteristics and of course, there are many people with the surnames who are not connected to this group. http://www.clinch.edu/appalachia/melungeon/ -- Ann Harvey Lahtinen, Steward <[email protected]> The Harvey Genealogist The Harvey Surname Association http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/6575/