Cumbo Family Website

My Cumbo ancestors migrated to Northampton County NC at the turn of the 19th century likely from Virginia.  Census records tracked them starting in 1820, as free colored, which then morphed over the next 100 years to mulatto then black then Negro.

DNA testing has helped me to connect with more distant Cumbo relatives.  My family and I have a handful of DNA matches who descend from a woman named Mary Polly Cumbo, born around 1800 of Robeson, North Carolina Cumbos. She married Allen Lowry and is the mother of Henry Berry Lowry, a historical American figure and leader of the Lowry War who is considered by many as a pioneer in the fight for Native American civil rights and tribal self-determination.

I had the pleasure of connecting with one Cumbo cousin DNA match who directly descends from Mary Polly Cumbo of Robeson NC.  In our initial correspondence he wrote to me, “I’d always been told that the Cumbos were Portuguese.”

This got me wondering how the Cumbos came to be known as Portuguese.  Here’s what I’ve uncovered so far:

1. The Cumbos were identified as tri racial. I’ve referended the mixed race origins of the Cumbos in a previous blog post. The article “Origins of the Lumbee” by S. Pony Hill says the following about Cumbo “Portuguese” origins:

Throughout the 1800’s, and across three states, this tri-racial identifier has been used by the mixed-blood families to explain physical features their white neighbors attempted to classify as resulting from Negro ancestry. For the most part the Lumbee and related families claimed to be solely of Indian-White mixture, but would occasionally claim Portuguese ancestry to justify non-Indian and non-White characteristics such as bushy hair, thick lips, etc. Polly Cumbaa was described as a “Portuguese woman” while married to Allen Lowry in Robeson.

2. Cumbos possibly descended from Portuguese slaves. Emanuell Cambow, a common ancestor for many Cumbos in America, according to Tim Hashaw’s book “The Birth of Black America”, was likely brought to the New World on a Portuguese slave ship sailing from Angola.  Other Cumbos were believed to come the same way.  According to “Origins of the Lumbee”:

The shorelines of the Chesapeake Bay area in Virginia appears to be area from which this Portuguese bloodline sprung, including Nothampton, York, and Surry Counties. Being identified as Portuguese during this era almost assuredly implies that these individuals were already mixed-blooded before settling foot on American soil. Portuguese slaves in the early 1600’s were most often a myriad of racial backgrounds, including Brazilian Natives, Canary Islanders, Mediterranean Arabs, East Indians, and of course West Coast Africans.

Perhaps over time being descended from Portuguese slaves morphed into family oral history that Cumbos descended from Portuguese.

3. Adopting a Portuguese identity offered the Cumbos a way to pass as white to avoid racial oppression in America. Racial passing occurs when a person classified as a member of one racial group is also accepted as a member of a different racial group.  According to Tim Hashaw’s book “Children of Perdition” on Melungeons like the Cumbos he wrote:

So in the early 1840s, just before Melungeons became “Portuguese”, racism had begun feeding on a new fear: mixing, once a social disgrace, was suddenly also biological suicide.  This new fear left Melungeons facing slow extinction.  A small community needs outside marriage to avoid inbreeding, and illegal mixing had gone on for decades.  Suddenly even sympathetic whites feared their own racial extinction.

Hashaw asserts that Melungeon families like the Cumbos across the American South adopted Portuguese identities as strategy to prove European ancestry and avoid oppressive jim crow and anti-miscegenation laws.

All of these factors have likely contributed to the claim of Cumbos as Portuguese. I’ve not uncovered any DNA studies that have validated a Cumbo genetic link to the Portuguese. A broader DNA study on Melungeons uncovered no genetic connection between Melungeons and the Portuguese and in fact seemed to draw similar conclusions to Hashaw.  Claims of Portuguese ancestry likely were a strategy used to remain free and retain other privileges that came with being considered white.

Establishing a Cumbo connection to the Portuguese in my estimation will require more extensive DNA study of Cumbo descendants.   This could be a very interesting and certainly challenging project for researchers.