I'm not much of a historian but ---

It's difficult to believe the settlers would have accepted extra mouths to feed as a gift-- weren't they starving to death?

Is there any possibility that the settlers made it south? England was just beginning to settle North America but the Caribbean had loads of Spanish settlements, as did the eastern coast of central and South America. I know the English were at war with the Spanish (generally speaking) but would the colonists care about Old World conflicts when they personally had occupied such low places in European society? They didn't leave England because they loved it so much there. Also, if they were from Devon would they have thought of themselves as Celts rather than English?

from Wikipedia---
The Settlement of Florida

In 1564 French Huguenots (Protestants) established a small colony along the St. Johns River near present-day Jacksonville. The following year, Pedro Menéndez de Avilés both expelled the French and founded the town of St. Augustine. Florida officially became a Spanish colony.

The Spanish established missions throughout the colony to convert Native Americans to Catholicism. Missions in northern Florida, such as those at St. Augustine and Apalachee (present-day Tallahassee), survived for many years.

I'm just not sure they left any of them there. They might have, of course, but the slaves were a substantial investment (and certainly worth more to Drake than the soldiers he was picking up). And while there being no record of them making it back to England wouldn't have been unusual, or mentioning losing hundreds of them on the way back (due to illness or malnutrition) wouldn't have been unusual, leaving them on the island and wasting that much potential money would be.

But yes, I do believe there was considerable mixing of the races before 1800. But the first specific reference to the Melungeons is in a Primitive Baptist congregation record in the mountains from 1804 or so.



Oh, they would have cared. Greatly. The single biggest danger to them wasn't the Indians, it was the Spanish. The Indians wouldn't necessarily kill them on sight. There was the colony you cite below, and another near present-day Charleston, SC founded by the French: Wikipedia rather primly says they were "expelled"; I'd say they were slaughtered. And the English knew that. And knew they'd get the same if they were found.

And I'm not sure many of the Devonians would think of themselves as "Celts". Raleigh certainly didn't, and he wasn't from a level of society too different from many of his colonists. Remember, the city of Exeter was the second or third biggest city in England at the time, and it's in Devon.

--Jaylemurph