November 2005

Melungeons Series

298 pages, 6 x 9

978-0-86554-950-0

$25.00t, Paper

Illustrations, index, bibliography

MUP/P299

DruAnna Elizabeth Williams Overbay

The story of the historic Vardy Community

Windows on the Past: The Cultural History of Vardy features oral histories and images of Melungeon daily life such as church gatherings and family activities by focusing on the Vardy Community School, a Presbyterian mission school, and the Vardy Community Church. A vivid description of the community and its historical buildings is included as the interviewees discuss the classroom environment and teaching activities within the school. The impact of the school’s staff and the spiritual and community leaders is also emphasized. Relative to these stories is the Vardy Community Historical Society, Inc., a group formed to restore Vardy landmarks and preserve the community pride.

Windows on the Past allows its readers the opportunity to experience Melungeon culture and the community through the voices of oral histories. Their respective viewpoints help us understand this distinctive Appalachian community located on Blackwater Creek, Newman’s Ridge, and Powell Mountain in Hancock County, Tennessee, and Lee County, Virginia.

DruAnna Elizabeth Williams Overbay, an English teacher at Jefferson County High School in Tennessee, is one of the founding members and current secretary of the Vardy Community Historical Society. She attended the Vardy Community School, where her parents taught. She lived the first fifteen years of her life in the Hancock County, Tennessee, community. The author and her siblings had lived on but still own the original homestead of the Melungeon patriarch, Vardemon Collins.

Titles of Related Interest

Melungeons: The Last Lost Tribe in America

North from the Mountains: A Folk History of the Carmel Melungeon Settlement, Highland County, Ohio

My Bones Are Red: A Spiritual Journey with a Tri-Racial People in the Americas

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