The Chestnut Ridge people (CRP) are a mixed-race community concentrated in an area northeast of Philippi, Barbour County, in north-central West Virginia, with smaller related communities in the adjacent counties of Harrison and Taylor. They are often referred to as "Mayles" (from the most common surname — Mayle or Male), or "Guineas" (now considered a pejorative term).[1][2]
The group has been the subject of county histories and some scholarly studies. Some scholars have classified this group as a tri-racial isolate. Contemporary census records frequently designate community members as "mulattos", implying African heritage. Thomas McElwain wrote that many CRP identified as an Indian-white mixed group, or as Native American, but they are not enrolled in any officially recognized tribe.[3] Paul Heinegg documented that many individuals were classified as free people of color, or similar terms in a variety of colonial, local and state records.
Some CRP have identified as Melungeon, a mixed-race group based in Kentucky and Tennessee, and attended the Melungeon unions, or joined the Melungeon Heritage Association. In 1997 two local historians made a presentation about the "Guineas of West Virginia" at the University of Virginia's College at Wise.[4]
History
Barbour County was settled primarily by white people from eastern Virginia, beginning in the 1770s and '80s. It was part of the colony (later state) of Virginia until West Virginia was admitted to the Union as a separate state during the American Civil War. The families that later became known as "Chestnut Ridge people" began to arrive after 1810, when Barbour was still part of Randolph and Harrison Counties, according to census records.[citation needed]
By the 1860s, many individuals from these multiracial families had married into the white community, and many of their descendants identified as white. Some of the men served in West Virginia Union army regiments during the American Civil War. Records in the Barbour County Courthouse indicate that a dozen men successfully petitioned the courts to be declared legally white after serving in the war for the Union.[5] In the 1890s, the local West Virginia historian Hu Maxwell was bemused by these families and how to categorize them, writing:
There is a clan of partly-colored people in Barbour County often called "Guineas", under the erroneous presumption that they are Guinea negroes. They vary in color from white to black, often have blue eyes and straight hair, and they are generally industrious. Their number in Barbour is estimated at one thousand. They have been a puzzle to the investigator; for their origin is not generally known. They are among the earliest settlers of Barbour. Prof. W.W. Male of Grafton, West Virginia, belongs to this clan, and after a thorough investigation, says "They originated from an Englishman named Male who came to America at the outbreak of the Revolution. From that one man have sprung about 700 of the same name, not to speak of the half-breeds." Thus it would seem that the family was only half-black at the beginning, and by the inter-mixtures since, many are now almost white.[6]
The people of "The Ridge" have traditionally been subject to severe racial discrimination, amounting to ostracism, by the surrounding majority-white community. Since the late 19th century, their neighbours have described them variously as free black or colored people, mulattoes, descendants of Italian railroad workers, or even survivors of the ill-fated Roanoke Colony. These same neighbors often called them "Guineas", a generalized slur against African Americans at the time.[7]
In the 1930s, a local historian recorded that "on several occasions suits have been entered in Taylor and Barbour courts seeking to prevent these people from sending their children to schools with whites but proof of claims they have negro blood in their veins never has been established".[8] As recently as the late 1950s, a few Philippi businesses still posted notices proclaiming "White Trade Only", directed against the Chestnut Ridge people, as they were believed to be part African-American. Although the local public schools were not segregated, truancy laws — which were strictly enforced for white children — were typically neglected with regard to "Ridge people".[citation needed] In her 2010 research, Alexandra Finley suggests the Chestnut Ridge families were initially open about their black heritage, but may have begun to identify increasingly as white to avoid racism – particularly anti-black racism – in the late 19th and 20th centuries, and would only acknowledge their black heritage under pressure.[9]
Demographics
If related individuals in the surrounding counties of Harrison and Taylor are included, the CRP probably now number about 1,500, almost all of whom bear one of fewer than a dozen surnames.[10] The Taylor County group (also long referred to by their neighbors as "Guineas" and mostly dispersed in the 1930s due to the flooding of their community — known as the "West Hill settlement" — by Tygart Lake) bore the surnames of Mayle, Male, Mahalie, Croston, Dalton, Kennedy, Johnson and Parsons, among others.[11] A 1977 survey of obituaries in The Barbour Democrat showed that 135 of 163 "Ridge people" (83%) living in Barbour County were married to people having the last names Mayle, Norris, Croston, Prichard, Collins, Adams, or Kennedy. In 1984, of the 67 Mayles who had listed telephones, all but three lived on "The Ridge."[12]
Ancestry
B.V. Mayhle self-published a family history entitled The Males of Barbour County, West Virginia in 1980, with two updates. He documented the origins of the Male, Mahle, Mayle, Mayhle name in the United States. He claimed to have found only one incident of interracial union.[13] In an interview, he said that the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania press had carried repeated sensational magazine articles in the early 1900s about the area, highlighting its poverty and mixed-race communities. He suggests this was the origin of accounts that the group was mixed-race.[citation needed] Mayhle said that three brothers, direct descendants of Wilmore/William Male, Sr. (the original Male immigrant), served in regular white units in the US Civil war. Two served in the 7th West Virginia Volunteer Infantry Regiment and one in the 1st West Virginia Volunteer Cavalry Regiment, which were all-white units.[citation needed]
Genealogist Paul Heinegg has used a variety of colonial-era court and tax documents to trace the ancestors of families identified in the South as free blacks in the first two censuses of the United States (1790, 1800). For instance, if a white woman had an illegitimate mixed-race child, the child had to serve a period of apprenticeship as an indentured servant to be trained in a trade and to prevent the community from having to support the woman and her child, meaning they should be included in recorded indentures.[citation needed] Heinegg found that most of the families of free people of color were descended from unions between white women, free or indentured servants, and African or African-American men, slaves or indentured servants, in colonial Virginia. According to the law of the colony and the principle of partus sequitur ventrem, by which children in the colony took the status of their mothers, the mixed-race children of these unions and marriages were born free because the mothers were free. While they were subject to discrimination, gaining free status helped these families get ahead in society.[citation needed]
Heinegg suggested that many of these free people of color migrated west with white neighbors and settled on the frontiers of Virginia, what became West Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee, as these areas were less bound by racial caste than were the Tidewater plantation areas. On the frontier, settlers were more concerned about people fulfilling social obligations as citizens.[citation needed] When analyzing generations of families classified as free blacks on those first two censuses, Heinegg noted that, for the early Mayle/Male family, many records from the 1790s to the 1850s classified members as "free black", "free mulatto", "free colored", etc.[14] Work by Alexandra Finley supports Heinegg's conclusion that the Male family largely descends in the direct paternal line from an immigrant Englishman, Wilmore Male (1755–c.1845), born in Dover, Kent, England.[15][16]
In the 1760s, Wilmore Male, Sr. settled in Virginia with his parents William and Mary. As an adult, around 1784, Wilmore, Sr. purchased a Bahamian slave named Priscilla "Nancy" Harris, who was recorded as also having unconfirmed Indigenous Caribbean heritage, and took her as his common-law wife – interracial marriage being illegal in Virginia at the time.[17][18] Except for one tax roll in 1797, where he was labelled a free black, Wilmore, Sr.'s race was either not listed or was declared as white until 1805 – although, from 1783–1800, all free persons were considered "white-titheable" for tax purposes. Finley concludes that despite this, discrepancies in his racial classification during this period were due to the perceptions of those recording such details – the only time he was described as black before 1805 was when an Arjalon Price recorded the information; the rest of the time, Wilmore, Sr.'s race was recorded by George Beall, who had known his father, and therefore listed him as white.[19] From 1805 onwards, records reflected Wilmore, Sr.'s family circumstances and the views of his neighbors: he was listed as a "free mulatto", which legally described someone with a quarter or more black heritage. He was subsequently listed as a free black (1806), free mulatto (1809–1811), "man of color" (1813, Monongalia County), free black (1815, Monongalia County) and "colored" (1817, Randolph County). Wilmore, Sr. had five sons with Nancy, who were all recorded as free blacks, free mulattoes or free colored people: Wilmore Male, Jr.; William Male; James Male; George Male; and Richard Male. His marriage to Nancy, and their mixed-race children, meant he was grouped with them.[20]
In 1826, when he was 71, Male emancipated Nancy on the condition she remained as his wife for the rest of his life, writing:
Be it known to all to whom it may concern that I, Wilmore Mail, of the County of Hampshire and Commonwealth of Virginia do by these presents liberate, emancipate, and forever set free ... my negro woman Nancy on the condition that she may remain with me during my natural life in the quality of my wife. I have set my hand and affixed my seal on this 6th day of May in the year of our Lord 1826.[21][22]
Historians and genealogists have also written of Nancy's heritage. Traditional accounts, such as the work by Thomas McElwain, had previously asserted that Nancy was white and Native American, citing family stories, a lack of records, and Male's circumstances as a bricklayer (meaning he may have been unable to afford to keep slaves).[24] This was sometimes in contrast with Mayhle's own work, which recognized her African heritage and stated that it was unknown if she had Indigenous heritage or not.[25] Scholarship since the 1990s, while ambivalent on the topic of Indigenous ancestry, suggests the evidence for her black heritage is much clearer. [26] According to Mayhle and Hoye, Priscilla "Nancy" Harris was the daughter of a Bahamian or Haitian slave and a man called Harris, who may have been Indigenous. They state that Nancy's mother was brought to the United States in the middle of the 18th century by Marquis Calmes, a Frenchman from the Bahamas, who had a plantation in Virginia. Nancy grew up on the Calmes plantation before Wilmore Male, Sr. purchased her.[25][27] According to Finley, it is probable that Male purchased Nancy with the intent of making her his wife.[28] This is supported by both Mayhle and Hoye, who report that she was said to be particularly attractive, and that some of her long hair was kept as a memento by the family.[29][25]
Finley's work also identified a number of other Chestnut Ridge families that can trace their heritage back to Revolutionary War-era mixed-race forebears, such as Sam Norris (1750–1844), Gustavus D. Croston (1757–c.1845) and Henry Dalton (1750–1836), as well as others arriving in the mid-19th century, such as Jacob Minerd (1816–1907). The descendants of each of these progenitors formed their own local lineage complete with unique folklore and origin story.[30]
Barbour County is a county in north central West Virginia, United States. At the 2020 census, the population was 15,465. The county seat is Philippi, which was chartered in 1844. Both county and city were named for Philip P. Barbour (1783–1841), a U.S. Congressman from Virginia and Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. The county was formed in 1843 when the region was still part of the state of Virginia. In 1871, a small part of Barbour County was transferred to Tucker County, West Virginia.
Hancock County is a county located in the northeastern part of the U.S. state of Tennessee. As of the 2020 census, the population was 6,662, making it the fourth-least populous county in Tennessee. Its county seat is Sneedville.
Sneedville is the only city in and the county seat of Hancock County, Tennessee, United States. The population was 1,282 per the 2020 census.
Philippi ('FILL-uh-pea') is a city in and the county seat of Barbour County, West Virginia, United States, along the Tygart Valley River. The population was 2,929 at the 2020 census. In 1861, the city was the site of the Battle of Philippi, known as the "Philippi Races". Although a minor skirmish, this is considered the earliest notable land action of the American Civil War. The city has a weekly newspaper, The Barbour Democrat.
Mulatto is a racial classification that refers to people of mixed African and European ancestry only. When speaking or writing about a singular woman in English, the word is mulatta. The use of this term began in the United States of America shortly after the Atlantic Slave Trade began and its use was widespread, derogatory and disrespectful. After the post Civil Rights Era, the term is now considered to be both outdated and offensive in America. In other Anglophone countries such as the British Isles, the Caribbean, and English and Dutch-speaking West Indian countries, the word mulatto is still used. The use of this word does not have the same negative associations found among English speakers. Among Latinos in both the US and Latin America, the word is used in every day speech and its meaning is a source of racial and ethnic pride. In four of the Latin-based languages, the default, masculine word ends with the letter "o" and is written as follows: Spanish and Portuguese – mulato; Italian – mulatto. The French equivalent is mulâtre. In English, the masculine plural is written as mulattoes while in Spanish and Portuguese it is mulatos. The masculine plural in Italian is mulatti and in French it is mulâtres. The feminine plurals are: English – mulattas; Spanish and Portuguese – mulatas; Italian – mulatte; French – mulâtresses.
Melungeon was a slur historically applied to individuals and families of mixed-race ancestry with roots in colonial Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina primarily descended from free people of color and white settlers. In modern times, the term has been reclaimed by descendants of these families, especially in southern Appalachia. Despite this mixed heritage, many modern Melungeons pass as White, as did many of their ancestors.
The terms multiracial people refer to people who are of multiple races, and the terms multi-ethnic people refer to people who are of more than one ethnicities. A variety of terms have been used both historically and presently for multiracial people in a variety of contexts, including multiethnic, polyethnic, occasionally bi-ethnic, Métis, Muwallad, Melezi, Coloured, Dougla, half-caste, ʻafakasi, mestizo, mutt, Melungeon, quadroon, octoroon, sambo/zambo, Eurasian, hapa, hāfu, Garifuna, pardo, and Gurans. A number of these once-acceptable terms are now considered offensive, in addition to those that were initially coined for pejorative use.
Redbone is a term historically used in much of the southern United States to denote a multiracial individual or culture. Among African Americans the term has been slang for fairer-skinned Black people, often for women specifically or for Black people with red undertones. In Louisiana, it also refers to a specific, geographically and ethnically distinct group.
CRP may refer to:
The one-drop rule was a legal principle of racial classification that was prominent in the 20th-century United States. It asserted that any person with even one ancestor of African ancestry is considered black. It is an example of hypodescent, the automatic assignment of children of a mixed union between different socioeconomic or ethnic groups to the group with the lower status, regardless of proportion of ancestry in different groups.
In societies that regard some races or ethnic groups of people as dominant or superior and others as subordinate or inferior, hypodescent refers to the automatic assignment of children of a mixed union to the subordinate group. The opposite practice is hyperdescent, in which children are assigned to the race that is considered dominant or superior.
The Carmel Indians are a group of Melungeons who lived in Magoffin County, Kentucky and moved to Highland County, Ohio. Dr. Edward Price observed that the most common surnames among the families were Gibson, Nichols and Perkins. His research found that the ancestors of the group were listed as free people of color on census records. Paternal line descendants of Bryson Gibson and Valentine Collins who participated in the Melungeon DNA Project belong to Haplogroup E-M2. The group were listed as free Black and Mulatto in Kentucky prior to the American Civil War.
Partus sequitur ventrem was a legal doctrine passed in colonial Virginia in 1662 and other English crown colonies in the Americas which defined the legal status of children born there; the doctrine mandated that children of enslaved mothers would inherit the legal status of their mothers. As such, children of enslaved women would be born into slavery. The legal doctrine of partus sequitur ventrem was derived from Roman civil law, specifically the portions concerning slavery and personal property (chattels), as well as the common law of personal property; analogous legislation existed in other civilizations including Medieval Egypt in Africa and Korea in Asia.
Black Dutch is a term with several different meanings in United States dialect and slang. It generally refers to racial, ethnic or cultural roots. Its meaning varies and such differences are contingent upon time and place. Several varied groups of multiracial people have sometimes been referred to as or identified as Black Dutch, most often as a reference to their ancestors.
Racial passing occurred when a person who was categorized as black - their Race in the United States of America, sought to be accepted or perceived ("passes") as a member of another racial group, usually white. Historically, the term has been used primarily in the United States to describe a black person, especially a Mulatto person who assimilated into the white majority to escape the legal and social conventions of racial segregation and discrimination. In the Antebellum South, passing as white was a temporary disguise used as a means of escaping slavery.
Chestnut Ridge may refer to:
The term 'Black elite' refers to elites within Black communities that are either political, economic, intellectual or cultural in nature. These are typically distinct from other national elites in the Western world, such as the United Kingdom's aristocracy and the United States' upper class.
Multiracial Americans, also known as Mixed Americans, are Americans who have mixed ancestry of two or more races. The term may also include Americans of mixed-race ancestry who self-identify with just one group culturally and socially. In the 2020 United States census, 33.8 million individuals or 10.2% of the population, self-identified as multiracial. There is evidence that an accounting by genetic ancestry would produce a higher number.
The Brass Ankles of South Carolina, also referred to as Croatan, lived in the swamp areas of Goose Creek, South Carolina and Holly Hill, South Carolina in order to escape the harshness of racism and the Indian Removal Act. African slaves and European indentured servants sought refuge amongst the Indians and collectively formed a successful community. Many of them are direct descendants of Robert Sweat and Margarate Cornish.
John Punch was an Angolan-born resident of the colony of Virginia who became its first legally enslaved person in British colonial America.
↑ Gaskins, Avery F. (1970), "The Epithet "Guinea" in Central West Virginia"; West Virginia University Philological Papers 17: pp. 41-44.
↑ McElwain, Thomas (1981), Our Kind of People: Identity, Community, and Religion on Chestnut Ridge, A Study of Native Americans in Appalachia, (Stockholm Studies in Comparative Religion, No. 20).
↑ Petitions of George W. Male and James Male, January Session, 1861; Petitions of Hiram Male, Stephen Newman, Richard Male, Stephen A. Male, Levi Collins, Franklin Male, George W. Collins, Elisha Male, Hezekiah Male and William Male, November Session, 1866; Barbour County County Circuit Court Records. Cited in: Shaffer, John W. (2003), Clash of Loyalties: A Border County in the Civil War, Morgantown, West Virginia: West Virginia University Press, pp 220-221, n. 81.
↑ Maxwell, Hu (1899). The History of Barbour County, From its Earliest Exploration and Settlement to the Present Time, The Acme Publishing Company, Morgantown, W.Va. (Reprinted, McClain Printing Company, Parsons, W.Va., 1968). pp.310–311.
↑ Barry, Brewton, Almost White;[pageneeded] Burnell, John P., The Guineas of West Virginia;[pageneeded] Gaskins, "An Introduction to the Guineas";[pageneeded] Gilbert Jr., William Harlan, Memorandum Concerning the Characteristics of the Larger Mixed-Blood Racial Islands of the Eastern United States; Henige, David, "Origin Traditions of American Racial Isolates";[pageneeded] Maxwell, Hu, The History of Barbour County, West Virginia, p. 310.
↑ "Clannish Group of Mixed Racial Blood in Taylor County" (1935), pg 2. This three-page manuscript by an anonymous local historian was published in 1972 by Paul C. Bartlett for the Taylor County Genealogical and Historical Society as part of a collection entitled Historical Anecdotes of Early Taylor County. It has been reprinted occasionally, most recently in 2011.
↑ Gaskins, Avery F. (Autumn 1973), "An Introduction to the Guineas: West Virginia's Melungeons"; Appalachian Journal, Vol. 1, No. 3, Appalachian Journal & Appalachian State University (pp. 234-237).
↑ "Decoding Our Past Through DNA", Episode 20 (second season) of Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.; first broadcast by Public Broadcasting Service television stations on November 25, 2014.
↑ Finley (2010), pp. 11–15. Finley suggests Nancy's black heritage may have been historically downplayed by the Male descendents in an attempt to avoid anti-black racism directed against them in the 19th and 20th centuries.
↑ Hoye, Charles E. "Garrett County History of Pioneer Families," Mountain Democrat (Oakland, MD), 16 April 1936
Burnell, Jr, John F. (1952), "The Guineas of West Virginia" (unpublished M.A. thesis), Ohio State University.
Gilbert, Jr., William Harlen. (1946), "Mixed Bloods of the Upper Monongahela Valley, West Virginia"; Journal of the Washington Academy of the Sciences, Vol. 36, no. 1 (Jan. 15, 1946), pp 1–13.
Gilbert, Jr., William Harlen. (1946), "Memorandum Concerning the Characteristics of the Larger Mixed-Blood Racial Islands of the Eastern United States", Social Forces 21/4 (May 1946), pp 438–477.
"Barbour County Home Of 'Guinea' Colony," Beckley Post Herald, 27 May 1965.
Smith, Joanne Johnson, Florence Kennedy Barnett, and Lois Kennedy Croston, "We The People Of Chestnut Ridge: A Native Community in Barbour County", Goldenseal, Fall 1999, published by West Virginia Division of Culture and History.
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