Search for content in message boards

goines

Posted: 23 Jul 2014 8:13PM GMT
Classification: Query
Hi My last name is goines. I have my father's last name. He is from tennessee. I have been told goines are mixed with cherokee indian. I am black but I have fine hair that most people have noticed as different all my life. It could be the indian part of me or it could be another part of my ancestry which is pretty awsome. I wonder about my ancestry.

Re: goines

Posted: 4 Nov 2014 5:31AM GMT
Classification: Query
The Goines/Goins/Goin/Going/Goyens... etc. name is definitely among the more predominant Melungeon surnames. Melungeons were defined as "tri-racial". There may be some Native American in your line as there is in mine but the features you mention probably come from white ancestors. This particular "Going" family is descended from a free African forbearer who arrived in Jamestown around 1620. Like most of the other Jamestown Africans he lived at a time before slavery existed as an institution in America. His children and grandchildren prospered and most married white women. By the time African slavery really took hold almost 100 years later, most of these families had moved West and South. Some wound up in West Virginia and Tennessee where they lived and married within close-knit communities that reinforced their dark features. Those that kept moving into NC, SC and GA continued to intermarry with white European families on the frontier and by about 1800-1840 most were considered "white", albeit with occasional dark hair or other features that were explained away as being derived from Indian ancestors (or else they be found out as "one drop" black and dispossessed of their rights). Plenty of books out there on the subject that you may want to take a look at.
per page

Find a board about a specific topic