HistoricalMelungeons : Message: "Black Dutch" - A Polite Euphemism?

HistoricalMelungeons : Message: "Black Dutch" - A Polite Euphemism?: "'Black Dutch' - A Polite Euphemism?
http://www.melungeon.org/?BISKIT=367877315&CONTEXT=cat&cat=10092
by Darlene Wilson
Note: This article, slightly revised here, appeared in the winter 1997-98 issue
of the Appalachian Quarterly, published by the Wise County Historical Society.
My mother's family (surname 'Albert,' mostly in and around Pulaski Co., VA)
always said that they were of 'Black Dutch' ancestry but no one then or now
living could explain, to my satisfaction, what that meant. Many of her aunts,
uncles, and siblings looked more Native American than any other ethnicity; by
the end of summer, one great-aunt of mine who loved to garden looked a lot like
surviving pictures of that much-noted Melungeon matriarch, Mahala Collins
Mullins who, as a young woman, appeared to be a medium-dark mulatto.
As is typical of many Appalachian families, my mother's people only bothered
to trace the one male line that could be linked:
1) to a 'name' on a ship's manifest-- in this scenario, an original 'Albert'
left Germany c. 1700-- and,
2) to a Revolutionary War pension record-- here, one of Albert's grandsons
apparently made his way down the Valley of Virginia after the War looking for
land."