MELUNGEON Ancestry of Abraham Lincoln

[Steve Whitlock]

(06-16-2019 10:20 AM)LincolnMan Wrote:  

(03-25-2016 05:20 AM)RJNorton Wrote:  

(03-24-2016 06:10 PM)maharba Wrote:  While doing some research for another person I came across the term Melungeon, and the claim that Abraham Lincoln was a Melungeon. I went to the net and looked around and the term Melungeon. It appears to refer to darker folks who lived in Kentucky and Appalachia and whose distant ancestry is obscure. There may be thousands of Melungions living today and very proud of their ancestry, though even they can not agree on just where it does trace back to. I wonder if Abraham Lincoln would be a melungeon on that mysterious Hanks line which has never yet really been unraveled?

There used to be a web page that discussed this possibility, but I cannot find the original page. However, I was able to locate it in the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. It is here.

The article is still accessible. I just read it again. It doesn’t come to any conclusion on the subject but is still interesting nonetheless. It does claim that Lincoln was color blind. I don’t remember reading that!

Sooooo, having read the fairy tale that is "A Mountain Girl and her Baby"
By Clarence Edward Noble, I can only say Puh-leeeze! For the Melungeon presentation it was determined that President Lincoln was Jewish because a Berry male was dna tested, and Thomas Lincoln was married in a Berry home where his wife had lived. The Berry family did have an influence for Abraham's aunt, Nancy (Lincoln) Brumfield, whose husband was the son of Joanna (Berry) Brumfield, a daughter of Richard Berry Sr and Rachel Shipley. However, that has nothing to do with the dna of Abraham Lincoln.

"A Mountain Girl and her Baby" also speaks of a Lucy Shipley who had a daughter named Nancy. Perhaps, but again that has nothing to do with Abraham Lincoln, whose mother was Nancy Hanks, a daughter of Lucy Hanks, as proven by my oft repeated mention of an mtdna study for Lucy Hanks, Rachel (Shipley) Berry and Naomi (Shipley) Mitchell, the results available at https://geneticlincoln.com.

If Berry and Shipley is all there is for Abe Lincoln as a Melungeon then there is nothing. According to an obit for Edward G. Berry, son of Richard Berry Jr (the Richard Berry on the marriage bond for Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks), Nancy was a servant in the Berry household. My understanding is that the information came from what Edward told his family.

I tried to attach the Edward G. Berry obit, but it's a .pdf file and the Symposium won't let me attach it.