Maybe Melungeon: A Riddle Family Research Trip Diary Part Two

Riddle Research Trip to Tennessee, North Carolina and Virginia
By Mary E.V. Hill

Part Two

Wednesday, September 10, 1997

Dear Journal, today was a truly lovely day. Everyone is being so very co-operative and we are seeing so many great things!

We went to the Courthouse of Montgomery County, Virginia this morning after breakfast, and it was truly a wonderful experience! These were seven intelligent and motivated people, and we went through drawer after drawer of files, or packets, of information on tiny slips of paper from the 1770’s and 1780’s. In four hours we found a gold mine of information:

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Note: This link directs you to the research trip diary but the page contains other Riddle family information which may also be of interest.

Maybe Melungeon: A Riddle Family Research Trip Diary Part One

Riddle Research Trip to Tennessee, North Carolina and Virginia
By Mary E.V. Hill

Part One

Saturday, September 6, 1997

Wow, dear Journal, here I sit in Rogersville, Hawkins County, Tennessee in the Hales Spring Inn, on a big old fashioned bed, writing in my Journal. I never dreamed that this day would come.

It has been several weeks of unbelievable pressure to get ready to come here – to write a paper to present to Mrs. Joan Baity of Wilkesboro, Wilkes County, North Carolina on this next Monday, and prepare five notebooks of documentation to give to Jim Riddle from Texas, Rebecca Wennermark from Indiana, Jack and Betty Goins from Rogersville, Tennessee, Chaunce and Bertha Riddle from Utah, and one for me. It was all accomplished, as well as going to work every day, and here I am.

The flight was lovely, and it is always so very interesting to see the lay of the land across this great nation. And Tennessee just beautiful, with rolling mountains and thick woods, and many rivers.

It was a very tender moment for me, as we came into the Knoxville airport, to look to the east and see the mountain range that was so much a part of William Riddle and the American Revolution here in this area, and where the seven surviving children lived. I can not say in words how grateful I am to be here.

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Part Two will be presented tomorrow.

Note: This link directs you to the research trip diary but the page contains other Riddle family information which may also be of interest.

Catching Summer in a Mason Jar

By Leigh Ann Henion

The ripe ear of corn came off in Eula’s hand with a rubbery squeak. “I must’ve missed one,” she said, raising her eyes to survey the garden-acre. After thinking about it for a minute she concluded, “My bucket must’ve been full. That’s probably why I left it.” Her conclusion made sense, because Eula Vines doesn’t miss much.

Eula has tended gardens as long as she can remember. She recalls learning to preserve summer’s bounty for leaner months as part of her upbringing in Watauga County, North Carolina.

She said, “When I got married, the only way you could make it was to grow a garden and can…We had no refrigerator and you had to can it to keep it. You used to have to do a water bath, but now we’ve got pressure cookers.”

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MountainLit & Life

Welcome to MountainLit & Life, a web site sponsored and supported by Fairmont State University Libraries in Fairmont, West Virginia. MountainLit & Life's mission is to educate, preserve, and disseminate West Virginia's wealth of literature, folk life and history; to promote the use of these materials by those inside and outside of our state's borders; and to provide a forum by which interested parties may contribute, discuss, and participate in this site's development.

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Juan Pardo's Expeditions

An Annotated Account
Of the Two Juan Pardo Expeditions
Into Southern Appalachia
By His Scribe Juan de la Bandera

In 1559, eighteen years after Hernando de Soto’s failed expedition across the Southeast in search of Indian wealth, Spain attempted to establish another colony in the New World. Tristan de Luna y Arellano was chosen to lead the colonization attempt. He led an expedition from Pensacola Bay northward to the Coosa towns De Soto had visited in northwestern Georgia. Luna followed much the same route De Soto had and visited many of the same Indian villages, however, he failed in his attempt to establish a viable colony and returned to Pensacola Bay.

In 1562 the French established a small fort on Port Royal Sound, South Carolina they called Fort Caroline. The Spanish, seeing the French fort as a threat to their ships sailing from Cuba to Spain, attacked and destroyed the fort. Three years later, in 1565, the Spanish began erecting a series of forts along the Atlantic coast to guard their shipping lanes from attack by the French. One, Fort San Felipe, was erected at Santa Elena on the southern tip of Parris Island, South Carolina and placed under the command of Pedro Menendez de Aliles. The next year, Menendez sent Captain Juan Pardo, leading an expedition of 125 soldiers, from Fort San Felipe westward into the interior with instructions to find a route to Spanish Mexico which was thought to be only several hundred miles away. It was the first of two expeditions Pardo would lead into the piedmont of what would later become North and South Carolina.

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Note: Some Melungeon origin theories have posited a connection between the Melungeons and the colonists of Santa Elena. Such a connection, direct or indirect, has never been demonstrated, or even made plausible, and is totally unsupported by documented Melungeon history.

De Soto's Expedition

A Narrative of De Soto's Expedition
Based on the Diary of Rodrigo Ranjel
His Private Secretary

On Sunday the 25^th of May, 1539, a fleet of nine Spanish ships entered a bay on the west coast of modern Florida which they named “Espiritu Santo”. Aboard the ships were some 600 Europeans (largely Spanish), 200 horses, 300 pigs, and several dogs. They had sailed from Spain in early April of 1538 and arrived in Cuba on June 7 of that year. They remained in Cuba, preparing for the coming expedition, until May 18, 1539 when they departed for La Florida. The leader of the expedition was a battle harden veteran of the Spanish conquests of Central and South America, Hernando de Soto. He used the fortune he had amassed as his share of those conquests to finance the impending expedition into the unknown southeastern United States where he hoped to duplicate those earlier successes. The expedition would last five years and cost him his life.

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AfriGeneas

African Ancestored Genealogy

AfriGeneas is a site devoted to African American genealogy, to researching African Ancestry in the Americas in particular and to genealogical research and resources in general. It is also an African Ancestry research community featuring the AfriGeneas mail list, the AfriGeneas message boards and daily and weekly genealogy chats.

To visit this award-winning site: Click Here.