RootsWeb: Melungeon-L Fetterman's "The Mystery of Newman's Ridge"

RootsWeb: Melungeon-L Fetterman's "The Mystery of Newman's Ridge": "Melungeon-L Archives

From: 'Connie Hoskins'
Subject: Fetterman's 'The Mystery of Newman's Ridge'
Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2005 00:14:14 -0500

Please excuse if this article has been previously posted. I've heard of it, but haven't read it until now. If it has been posted, maybe it's been a while and will be fresh reading for most people. He's certainly gentler w/ the Melungeons than he was w/ the people of Stinking Creek in Knox Co KY.

Regards, Connie

'The Mystery of Newman's Ridge', by John Fetterman, from Life magazine June 26, 1970

Mr. Fetterman is a journalist and author specializing in Appalachia.

When the cold season comes, the wind bites and howls along Newman's Ridge in east Tennessee, nudging the snow across silent, ancient graveyards and against sturdy cabins fashioned from monstrous hand-hewn poplar logs. Only the wind knows the origin of the dark-complexioned and handsome people who settled on the ridge, some say hundreds of years before Columbus found the New World, and the wind will not tell."

Lest We Forget: The Melungeons of Newman's Ridge