Tips on Black Dutch! Black Irish, Melungeons,

[D J Thornton]

http://homepages.rootsweb.ancestry.com/ ... kdutch.htm

This website has a great overview of variou groups. The German Noravians, Black Duth I found interesting. I have a German gig grandfather who came from Preetz, Germany a Duchy of Denmark in 1860 when he came over. He want allowd to immigrate at te time, escaping one war to end up in The CSA Civil war afew years later. Denmark was high in my matches. I had some other curious matches that I can't account for except maybe by K MTDNA of my paternal grandmother or my Hmtdna.. This German grandfather Hamburg is on my maternal, fathers, mother. Isn't MTDNA testing grand.
Anyway her is this from the article I noted first. Then read

Some say that Black Dutch, Black Irish, and other terms, were applied to those persons who were the offspring of local citizens (women) and shipwrecked sailors from Spain or other countries where the people have darker skins. Others will say that the term pertains to a person of a very mean disposition.

According to the web page at: http://new-jerusalem.com/genealogy/part23.html - a Dutch revolt against the Spanish monarch began in 1555 and continued until 1609. The nation could not find enough soldiers to defend its empire and Spain subjected neighboring Portugal and impressed Portuguese men into Spanish regiments throughout the empire. A new race was created in he southern part of Holland during the six decades that Spanish and Portuguese soldiers were stationed there. It produced dark-skinned children that were the beginning of the Black Dutch.

By the mid-1800s the term had become an American colloquialism; a derogative term for anything denoting one's small stature, dark coloring, working-class status, political sentiments, or anyone of foreign extraction. It has been used as a derogatory expression labeling German Union troops in the Civil War. has come down through history with the designation of the Great Moravian Empire. It included not only the Czech Lands of Moravia, Bohemia and Silesia, but Slovakia and parts of Austria, Hungary, Poland and Germany as well.