According to Tim Hashaw’s book “The Birth of Black America: The First African Americans and the Pursuit of Freedom at Jamestown”:
The African Cumbo family first appeared in Jamestown documents in September 1644 and they, too, survived and traveled far from the colony over many generations. That year, the Virginia House of Burgesses ruled Manuel Cambow was a Christian Servant and ordered that he was to serve as other Christians in indenture. He was freed in September 1665 and, two years later, was granted fifty acres in James City County.
Emanuell Cambow’s descendants lived on as free people of color and intermarried with whites and Native Americans throughout the Virginia and coastal North Carolina areas through the colonial period of America. As a result, over successive generations, many Cumbo family branches either maintained black or mixed race identities, passed as white (Melungeon or Portuguese) or fully embraced Native American (Lumbee or Tuscarora) identities.
Included in the link below is a list of 17th century Mixed Blood families from which Most Mixed Ethnic Groups, of Early Virginia Records descend.
See the Cumbos in the following sections: “Common Mixed Blood Surname List” (black/mixed race) and “Melungeon and Melungeon-related surnames” (white) and “Lumbee/Croatan Indian” (Native American). Cumba, Cumbaa, Cumbee, Cumbo, Cumboe, Cumbow
Virginia would later in 1662 and 1667 codify slavery and legislate that an African could be baptized a Christian, yet remain a slave. The first law in 1662 mandated that children born to Negro women would inherit the condition of enslavement or freedom based on the mother’s status in order to absolve any White planters of inheritance for their mixed race children. By 1700 very few blacks in the colonies could legitimately prove their freedom. So, some formed Creole communities, lived among Native Americans, passed as White or were sold into slavery.