A presentation about the Melungeons by Billy Denham, Southeast Tennessee Director of the Melungeon Heritage Association, is set for Saturday, Oct. 7. Mr. Denham will explain who the Melungeons are and where they came from.
The presentation will be held at the Downtown Library Auditorium, 1001 Broad St. at 10 a.m.
To compliment Mr. Denham’s program, Mary Helms is planning an exhibit of library materials and court documents about Chattanooga's celebrated Melungeon case involving Martha Simmerman, the daughter of Jerome Simmerman, and his wife, Jemima Bolton Simmerman.
This was one of the early successes as a lawyer of Judge Lewis Shepherd. Judge Shepherd wrote an account in his Personal Memoirs. The chapter is the "Romantic Account of the Celebrated Melungeon case.” It starts out, "Many years ago, when Tennessee was being settled by white people, there came to this section from Virginia a wealthy man with his family and his slaves. He bought a large and valuable tract of land and cleared it up and converted it into a farm. This tract was situated in the bend of the river, now called Moccasin Bend." The hero's mother and half sisters tried to prevent his marriage to the young woman famed for her beauty. There is a marriage in Georgia, and later the untimely death of the beautiful wife. Judge Shepherd goes on, "cupidity of relatives leads to their undoing."
Years ago John Wilson did a story about this as one of his Pioneer Families articles. An item was in the Times in 1953, "Old Grave's Casket Stolen; Linked to 'Buried Fortune.'"
The library has received the old Hamilton County Chancery Court (1863-1900) and Circuit Court (1875-1892) loose records which have recently been microfilmed. This famous case is in them.