The Turks of South Carolina were a group of people who lived in the general area of Sumter County, South Carolina in the 19th century. In the early 20th century, it was believed these people came from a primarily Native American background with some admixture of Turkish. They have been mistakenly connected to a family of "Free Moors" who resided in Charleston. The tax collector of Sumter sent an inquiry dated December 7, 1858 to the SouthCarolina Committee on the Colored Population, inquiring as to whether the "descendants of Egyptians and Indians" who resided in Sumter should be taxed under the bracket of "Free Blacks, mulattoes and mestizos, or as whites." Since the late 20th century, researchers have suggested these people were likely descendants of unions between whites and free, enslaved or indentured Africans or African-Americans.
History
The ancestors of this group of mixed-blood people are often referred to as having served as "scouts" under General Thomas Sumter; however, the only references made as to Sumter's Scouts were that he often employed Catawba Indians for that purpose. He was "often visited" by those Indians he had formerly employed. After the American Revolution, General Thomas Sumter gave land to Scott and Joseph Benenhaley near his plantation. In the 1850s and 1860s, several members of the "Turk" community filed affidavits of Indian descent with the Sumter CountyClerk of Court claiming they were of Catawba descent. In the late 1880s McDonald Furman, an avid local historian, published numerous articles regarding the mixed-blood families of Sumter. Furman described their ancestry as "a large amount of Indian blood" and said that the ancestors of the group originated from the "Catawba Indians." The Turks of South Carolina today include surnames such as Benenhaley, Oxendine, Scott, Hood, Buckner, Lowery, Goins, and Ray. Some of these surnames also appear among mixed-race people known as Melungeons and Brass Ankles. Genealogy records show that several of their ancestors married Native Americans.
