Re: Melungeons are part Black

I'm wondering if someone would know of the roots of the Reynolds "Blackfoot" or Lumbee people in the Carolinas.My Reynolds lived and worked in the 1800s in Virginia, North Carolina and Georgia. They worked on the Reynolds plantation in Winston-Salem, North Carolina and were supposedly in part related to the white Reynolds family.

My great grandmother Sarah Hale an herbal woman born around 1870s said her people came originally from South Carolina and were called "the Blackfoot' who I'm told were related to the Lumbee or Catawba somehow.I am assuming she was talking about her husband's people as well since they were supposed to have lived on a reservation for a while. My grandfather used the term "Cherokee" for the Hale ancestors and his sister said "Shawnee".
The Reynolds were mostly people of dark red brown skin color with straightish hair that did not always lack a African or kinky quality. They are called black and mulatto in the records. To me they always look rather like the Tuareg of Sahara being a very tall people, but they also look part Indian.
The Reynolds in my family were also related to people named Brown, Hale, Callaway, Saunders, Turner. I have read that some of these names were Lumbee or Nottoway Indian.

But what I would really like to know is how the surname Reynolds came to be associated with the Lumbee.