The Colley family ties into the Melungeon story by Lynchburg City LVA chancery file 1821-033. One branch of the Coley family was among a long list of slaves who sued for their freedom based on testimony that they descdended from a free "mulatto" woman from the Gibson family who lived in Charles City County in the 1730s-1750s. Her granddaughter and all her descendants were made slaves by the man to whom they were indentured. The Lynchburg case was discontinued due to the death of their lawyer, so they remained slaves until Emancipation.

Another branch of the Gibson family were wealthy mixed-race landowners who formed a community in Hanover/ Louisa County with the Collins, Bunch, Denham and others who later formed the Melungeon community of Tennessee.

Yet another branch of these Gibsons went to South Carolina in 1731. Daniel Sharfstein tells their story in "The Invisible Line" (2011). Their descendant Randall Gibson was a Yale graduate, Confederate war hero and U.S. senator from Louisiana.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/27/books/review/Arsenault-t.html
Paul

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