Jack Goins

My ancestors have been in Appalachia for many years, and in tracing them I have found a lot of interesting and sometimes unusual situations. One of these situations is when a lady at Stony Creek Church described a group of people as melungin.

Through the years I have learned much about the Melungeons from the descendants of the families who were classified Melungeon, including my own Goins and Minor family.

What I have enjoyed most of all is backtracking these pioneer families from the Clinch River at Blackwater, Tennessee to the many places they lived during their incredible migration journey, so I have named this web site as the place to share “my incredible research journey.”

As the Hawkins County Tennessee Archivist, I want to share the progress of our volunteer organization, "Friends Of The Hawkins County Archive Project." We have completed the process of cleaning, indexing and microfilming the court records dating from 1787 to 1930 and are now open to the public from 9 AM until 4 PM Monday through Thursday, anyone in the area please stop by the archive.

Melungeon researchers and authors are listed on this site with their books and some information about them.

Our DNA projects may interest you, they show relationships with the ones tested, and also studying their deep ancestry is interesting. Our Melungeon Project has a DNA adviser, Roberta Estes. Roberta has family roots in the area, she has an understanding of the culture and problems with researching these families, plus her knowledge of DNA and how it works help keep us from going astray with our Melungeon Project.

My research is a search for the truth and sometimes the truth is sad and unpleasant, but wherever this journey leads me, I’ll share it, so come and go with me on this journey.