The Chestnut Ridge people (CRP) are a mixed-race community concentrated in an area northeast of Philippi, Barbour County in north-central West Virginia, with smaller related communities in the adjacent counties of Harrison and Taylor. They are often referred to as "Mayles" (from the most common surname — Mayle or Male), or "Guineas" (now considered a pejorative term).
The group has been the subject of county histories and some scholarly studies. Some scholars have classified this group as a tri-racial isolate. Contemporary census records frequently designate community members as "mulattos", implying African heritage. Thomas McElwain wrote that many CRP identified as an Indian-white mixed group, or as Native American, but they are not enrolled in any officially recognized tribe. Paul Heinegg documented that many individuals were classified as free people of color, or similar terms in a variety of colonial, local and state records.
Some CRP have identified as Melungeon, a mixed-race group based in Kentucky and Tennessee, and attended the Melungeon unions, or joined the Melungeon Heritage Association. In 1997 two local historians made a presentation about the "Guineas of West Virginia" at the University of Virginia's College at Wise.
History
Barbour County was settled primarily by white people from eastern Virginia, beginning in the 1770s and '80s. It was part of the colony (later state) of Virginia until West Virginia was admitted to the Union as a separate state during the American Civil War. The mixed-race families that later became known as "Chestnut Ridge people" began to arrive after 1810, when Barbour was still part of Randolph and Harrison Counties, according to census records.
By the 1860s, many individuals of these mixed-race families had married into the white community, and their descendants identified as white. Some of the men served in West Virginia Union army regiments during the Civil War. Records in the Barbour County Courthouse indicate that a dozen men successfully petitioned the courts to be declared legally white after serving in the war for the Union.
The local West Virginia historian Hu Maxwell was bemused by the origin of these people when he studied Barbour County history in the late 1890s:
There is a clan of colored people in Barbour County often called "Guineas", under the erroneous presumption that they are Guinea negroes. They vary in color from white to black, often have blue eyes and straight hair, and they are generally industrious. Their number in Barbour is estimated at one thousand. They have been a puzzle to the investigator; for their origin is not generally known. They are among the earliest settlers of Barbour. Prof. W.W. Male of Grafton, West Virginia, belongs to this clan, and after a thorough investigation, says "They originated from an Englishman named Male who came to America at the outbreak of the Revolution. From that one man have sprung about 700 of the same name, not to speak of the half-breeds." Thus it would seem that the family was only half-black at the beginning, and by the inter-mixtures since, many are now almost white.
The people of "The Ridge" have traditionally been subject to severe racial discrimination, amounting to ostracism, by the surrounding majority-white community. In the 1930s, a local historian recorded that "on several occasions suits have been entered in Taylor and Barbour courts seeking to prevent these people from sending their children to schools with whites but proof of claims they have negro blood in their veins never has been established". As recently as the late 1950s, a few Philippi businesses still posted notices proclaiming "White Trade Only", directed against the CRP, as they were believed to be part African-American. Although the local public schools were not segregated, truancy laws — which were strictly enforced for white children — were typically neglected with regard to "Ridge people".