Hi Roy,

Of course, another term "Black Dutch", generally refers to Southerners of mixed Native-American and European-American ancestry. There are also "Melungeons" who may fall into this category and both groups would exhibit the dark-skinned, black-haired and brown-eyed appearance you describe.

My family, which is from Oklahoma, with a large percentage of Indian ancestry, always claimed "Black Dutch" ancestry through my grandmothers, who were both mixed-blood Cherokee.

Regarding, your obtaining the Pension Application file of your ancestor through the Veteran's Administration, can you provide a little more detail, either through the message board or by email to me, exactly the process you went through? As you may know, History-Sites.Com provides a service to obtain service records and pension application files. Occasionally, we run into this situation with Union pension applications, where they are housed at the VA, not the NARA. Our only recourse with our customers, is to refund their purchase and advise them to contact the VA. Can you tell me generally, what is the process like? Do you have to prove a relationship to the veteran? What forms are used to obtain these files? Why, in your opinion or experience, does it take so long to get these records from the VA? It has been our experience that the records stored at the VA, are generally for veterans or their widows who survived past 1930. Was this your experience? So that I might give a little more help to our customers when this issue arrives in the future, any additional information or suggestions you can offer would be most appreciated.

Thanks,

Jim Martin