Questions

[undergroundpanther]

Hi I was gonna ask anyone,here...
Does anyone know anything about the melungeons,out in Appalachia? Especially around the Grayson Co.North Carolina/Virginia areas?

I am descended from Ned Sizemore,I know there is a controversy about the Sizemores.Confuses me.. My later descendant was Catherine Osbourne a daughter of Ned "of all" Sizemore. She had a certificate for application to the Cherokee nation but never turned it in.I am presuming here..(I don't know what the issue was really.. but regardless I got a copy of it).I guess either she was not applicable because it was not her tribe,She was not Indian,or she was hiding out.She was married to John Petty..
There seems to be alot of mystery surrounding all this stuff.

Some people say there were two Sizemores.One was Indian the other was a charlatan or 'traitor'.I have no clue about any of this really. Either way I have been told there were Indians on both sides of my family. I have been told by my Indian friends I have Indians in my family.I know there were a section of Indians possibly on my moms side that were expunged from the rolls for some reason unknown to me.either they were"not Indian enough" or they were rebels refusing to march the trail of tears,or they were hiding with white people that hid them out and they played white to void the persecution going on back than of anyone not white enough(this was the era of racism and eugenics and people and corporations moving in to extract resources from the mountains and grab the land).

I am relatively(har bad pun!)new to genealogy and I don't know all that much about HOW to do it,I get confused so easily. But I am wondering if anyone here knows more about the mystery with my mom's family tho,does anyone know anything about them.
Heres the rundown of names I got so far..

Ned Sizemore..who was called
"all" because he had sired ALOT of kids apparently.
Not sure if he was a "white-top cherokee"
or some fraud poser.
I would like to know which he was someday.

than we got..
Sally and Elias Osbourne
than
David Osbourne and Lucy billings
than
Catherine Osbourne John Petty,
than
Leander And Alli Irwin,
than
My grandmother Ruth and Dempsey Petty
and then my mom and lastly..me.

If anyone has any info about the Sizemore issues the Osbourne's and all Please PM me or post it here...If I can dig up anything in the stuff I have I'll check a name for ya!


Thanks!!! in advance!








Anyways

[preciousdove]

1. melungeons; ttb Portuguese "Those that God forgot"

Lots online. There was a terrific group working on these families back in the middle 1990's. I was paying attention because of my ex-husbands Mullins family. Just checked my BK and I have no Sizemores at all.

Melungions were thought to possibly be here before Jamestown. Because of words passed down it is thought Portuguese that married into Native American tribes and later an occasional African and since the first settlements kept out all Irish and they were the buffer between the English and the NA and Melugnions some of them also married into the groups. NA think of them as "other". From what I understand there were NAs who took off for the hills and the swamps when the Trail of Tears was going on 1830. Cyndi's List should have the best sites and they would have links to more obscure sites.

[undergroundpanther]

2. How do I find my folks in all this stuff?

Whre do I start?

[preciousdove]

3. Ned Sizmore

For the families that shunned offical records you need to rely on your ability to reason to sort it out or the ability of other researchers you feel you can trust. The family had a strong oral history that was passed down. Usually some of that is exact and some of it is questionable. For those of us who like hard facts this kind of genealogy comes closer to theory than findings. The alternative is to have no family history and lets face it we got here somehow and even the genealogy of Kings has some "theory".

Google for "Ned Sizemore"
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLD,GGLD:2005-11,GGLD:en&q=%22Ned+Sizemore%22

SurnameWeb for "Sizemore"
http://www.surnameweb.org/scripts/data/database.cgi?surname=Sizemore&file=swlink&report=Page

Cyndis List for "Sizemore"
http://search.freefind.com/find.html?oq=melongeons&id=2077098&pageid=r&lang=en&query=sizemore&mode=ALL

Cyndis List for "Melungeon"
http://search.freefind.com/find.html?oq=melongeons&id=2077098&pageid=r&lang=en&query=melungeons&mode=ALL