Thomas Collins, Lost Melungeon Roots
Thomas Collins was born about 1785, presumably in Ashe, North Carolina. He was a Melungeon and noted as “Free Colored Person” (FCP) on the 1820 and 1830 U.S. censuses. Thomas married Nancy Williams, who was also denoted as a FCP, around 1800. They moved with their grown children to Perry Co., Kentucky, from Ashe, North Carolina, about 1835. Thomas was then denoted as “Free White Person” on the 1840 census, and the family has been White ever since.
Melungeons: The “free colored people” of Appalachia
The word “Melungeon” started as a racial slur but came to denote the insular communities of darker skinned Baptists, Portuguese, African, Native American, and possibly Romani or Jewish settlers in the Appalachian Mountains of Tennessee, Virginia, and North Carolina before the Revolutionary War. Today, it is considered to refer to a tri-racial isolate from the Southeastern United States.
One theory of the population’s mixed origins is that they were the Roanoke Lost Colony survivors, saved by the native tribes and seagoing folk, who they then intermarried with and settled along the coast. Collins is one surname in the Lumbee, who have an oral history of being descended from the lost colonists. Another theory is that they were Turkish Moors or Middle Eastern settlers from the 16th century who were…
