What document says that Frances, wife of Richard Austin, was a Saponi Indian?

Question

Curious to know if Frances being a Saponi Indian is just family folklore, completely fabricated (which I have seen some people do!), or has a basis in fact.

Answer 1

Nothing on this profile supports that claim.  The origins of Frances (if that was her name) and her husband are undocumented. If Frances was a Saponi Indian, born in what are now extreme southwest Virginia or the Carolinas, in 1682 (or even 1700) how did she meet and marry a white man born twenty years later and hundreds of miles away in southeast Virginia? Interracial marriage was illegal in both Virginia and North Carolina and by 1700, Native Americans had been either wiped out or forced out of most settled areas of Virginia; the colonists moved west only as the Indians were removed.  Richard Austin obtained land in what is now Lunenburg County in the 1740’s.  His brother John was a county officer.  (Some Internet stories give John the Saponi wife.)  John left a will naming wife Hannah, Richard left a will which did not list his wife by name and implies that he had minor children still living with their mother, pretty unlikely if she was 80 years - or even 60 years - old.

This seems to be one of the common  “Indian in the family” stories.

Answer 2

After posting my question, I googled and found conflicting information (Surry Co or Rowan Co?) about the source of Saponi Indian intermarriage. 

From a wikitree page [https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Austin-3026 Joseph Champness Austin ]

INDIAN ANCESTRY:" John, Jr identified himself as a Saponi at a court hearing in Surry County. Valentine was also identified as an Indian at a court hearing in Surry County. Later, it was discovered the Richard (son) and Joseph were identified by the state of Virginia as Melungeons (Not of pure European blood). Since four of the five known children have been identified as "mixed blood" it is felt that there was only one mother for all the known children." 

And then from a blog page [ https://johnclinard.wordpress.com/early-austin-families-of-va-md-connections/ ]

John Austin, Jr. tells a North Carolina Court he is a Saponi Indian, 1755.

(Abstracts of the minutes of the Court of Pleas and Quarter Session, Rowan County North Carolina, 1753-1762, 11:72, 19 April 1755)

Whereas John Auston a Saponia Indian and Mary a Susquhanna Indian and Thomas a Cataba applied for a pass to the Cataba Nation being now on their journey to conclude a general peace with ye Catabas in behalf of the the said Nation and also presented 3 belts of wampum to said Court by which the said Treaty is to be concluded.

Will need to do more research to confirm these sources and investigate whether they are even concerning the same family.

Comments

The quoted record does not refer to the same people.  Your Austins were living in  Lunenburg County and were landowners and court officers, which would not be the case if they were Indians.  Some one has found a record of a person with a similar name in a different location and made a huge leap. The North Carolina record names important Native Americans engaged on a peace mission, not a family of white colonists.  And as you can see from reading it, Indians were not allowed to move freely among whites.  This group needed a pass just to travel across European controlled lands.  The Saponi and Susquehanna were living in Pennsylvania at this time and were allied with the Six Nations farther north.

“Melungeon” is a relatively modern term.  The Austins appear on lists of tithables in Lunenburg as free white men.  

As is often the case, different people have been erroneously combined.