Melungeons

I came across these people when I took on the administration of the RootsWeb Message Boards [ Melungeon ] for a period in 2004 and 2005

melungeon rootsweb - Google Search

info:
"If you ask, ' Who are the Melungeons?' you are like most people. If you have been researching your family in the Cumberland Plateau of Virginia, Kentucky, North Carolina, West Virginia, and Tennessee, during the early migration years, you may be able to find them through a connection to this group of people who are only now being researched with unbiased eyes. The Melungeons are a people of apparent Mediterranean descent who may have settled in the Appalachian wilderness as early or possibly earlier than 1567."

Melungeon Health

melungeons - Google Search



Some descendants have had six fingers or toes.
There is a family of people in Turkey whose surname translated into English is "Six Fingered Ones." The term for that in Turkiq is "AltI parmak." (pronounced "altah-par-mock) "AltI" ends with the undotted Turkish "i" which is pronounced as "uh."

There is a region near Efes (Ephesus) called "AltI Parmak" - many of the people there have historically had six fingers.

Some families have even taken the last name of "AltIparmak."