Chat
|
Daily Search
|
My GenForum
|
Community Standards
|
Terms of Service
|
|
|
Hi Angela this is a newspaper arcticle that was sent to me on the subject. I will get you these peoples web site also. HOwever, they charge you to go on and research more in depth.
Debbie
By M. Scott Morris
Daily Journal
SALEM COMMUNITY – For a pair of Elvis researchers, Mackey Hargett is more than a man. He’s an important piece of evidence.
Julian Riley of Verona and Rachel Ann Harden of Saltillo teamed up in 2006 to document Elvis Presley’s family tree. They’ve trudged through cemeteries, rummaged through photo albums and talked to the King of Rock ’n’ Roll’s kin to get the story for their Web site, www.rootsofelvispresley.com.
“A lot of people have told us they knew they were related to Elvis but they didn’t know how,” Harden said. “We’ve been able to go back and show them how.”
Hargett, a resident of the Salem community in Itawamba County, didn’t need help establishing his relationship to Elvis Presley. He has a box of photos to prove it.
“Vernon and I were sitting in the kitchen at Graceland talking and Elvis came in,” Hargett said, recalling a conversation with Elvis’ father in his son’s Memphis home. “Vernon said, ‘Elvis, this is a cousin of yours on the Wallace side of the family.’
“This was something,” Hargett continued, “a teenager standing in front of his cousin, Elvis Presley, in the kitchen of Graceland in Memphis, Tenn.”
Today, Elvis would have turned 73. He died at Graceland in August 1977.
A mystery
The family connection impressed the researchers, too, because it provided clues that helped them solve a puzzle that traces back to Elvis’ great-grandparents.
When Riley and Harden got to the 1800s, they found a woman named Rosie (Rosella) Elizabeth Presley in Itawamba County.
“Elvis’ great-grandmother never married, but she had seven children,” Riley said. “One of them was Jesse Dee Presley.”
He was Vernon Presley’s father.
But the question remained: Who was Jesse Dee Presley’s father?
“When he got married the second time,” Riley said, “they asked him the names of his folks. He wrote down that his father was known as John Presley. Well, there was no John Presley, but there was a John Wallace.”
Circumstantial evidence
To say the Civil War took a heavy toll is the definition of understatement, and that toll continued after the fight ended.
“So many men were killed during the war,” Riley said. “That’s why you had young women marrying men in their 60s.”
There were also women who never married, but still had children. According to the researchers, Rosella Presley and John Wallace lived near each other for most of their lives.
“In 1896, Rosella Presley moved from Tilden to Clay community in Itawamba County,” Riley said. “That’s where Jesse Dee Presley is born.”
In 1897, John Wallace left Tilden and moved to the north part of the county.
“For the rest of their lives, they moved around Itawamba County,” Riley said, “but they never were more than 10 miles apart.”
Hargett’s family tree
Riley and Harden found circumstantial evidence to link John Wallace to Elvis Presley, but they found no birth certificate or marriage license to document the relationship.
Mackey Hargett provided the crucial connection. He’s not related to Rosella Presley. His grandmother is the daughter of John Wallace and his wife, Almira.
“My grandmother was a half sister to Jesse Dee Presley. Her name was Nora Wallace,” Hargett said. “She was John Wallace’s oldest daughter. This is how I got through the gates of Graceland for almost 20 years to visit with my relatives, whom I loved dearly.”
That connection probably wouldn’t have mattered until 1957, when, as Hargett put it, “Elvis was Elvis!”
“My mother and grandmother knew it,” he said, “but it never would’ve gotten to me if he hadn’t been famous.”
Contact entertainment reporter M. Scott Morris at (662) 678-1589 or scott.morris@djournal.com.
Elvis Presley Fest still alive despite tough 2007 results
Notify Administrator about this message?
Followups:No followups yet |
| http://genforum.genealogy.com/presley/messages/1226.html | ||
 |
Link to GenForum Add Forum |
|