February 6, 1939 – Elvis Presley’s father Vernon was released from the Parchman Farm

FEBRUARY 6, 1939 – Elvis Presley’s father Vernon was released from the Parchman Farm penitentiary after serving eight months of a three year sentence for altering a check.
Vernon Presley had married Gladys Love Smith on June 17, 1933. Elvis Presley’s parents actually eloped in the County of Pontotoc, Mississippi where Vernon was not known, both lying about their ages. Vernon was 17, but gave his age as 22, and Gladys was 21 but claimed to be 19.
Like his relatives before him, Vernon worked at any odd job that came along. For a while, he and Vester, his older brother, farmed together, raising cotton, com, soybeans and a few hogs. Later, he took a job with the WPA, a federal government make – work program during the Depression. Next, he drove a delivery truck for McCarty’s, a Tupelo wholesale grocer, delivering grocery items to stores throughout northeast Mississippi. These, then, were the Presley genes, passed along from generation to generation, some of which undoubtedly were inherited by the infant born in that two-room house in the hills of East Tupelo. Gladys sister Clettes married Vester, Vernon’s older brother. Thus, two brothers married two sisters. Few know it, but in the beginning, their roles were reversed. Vester started out dating Gladys. Vernon, eighteen months younger, originally dated Clettes. Recalled Vester, “I dated Gladys a few times and Vernon dated Clettes. Gladys didn’t like my attitude much. As I have always told you, I was too wild, in those days. So, Gladys quit seeing me and we quit seeing the Smith girls for awhile. Then, Vernon started dating Gladys and soon there was only one object of his affection – Gladys.”
Gladys would hide her real age for much of her life. In her book “Elvis and Gladys”, Elaine Dundy says ‘Impetuosity and impulsiveness played a large part in Gladys make up. She knew nothing of half measures, nor was there anything half-heated or self-protective about her’. Elvis would inherit from Gladys his unpredictable impulses.
About the end of June 1934, Gladys knew she was pregnant. Sometime around her fifth month she was sure she was having twins – she was unusually large, could feel two babies kicking and had a family history of twins on both sides of the family. Gladys was earning $2 a day at the Tupelo Garment Company, while Vernon worked at various odd jobs, including one on the dairy farm of Orville S. Bean. With $180 that he borrowed from Bean after Gladys became pregnant in the spring of 1934, Vernon set about constructing a family home, and he and Gladys moved in that December.
Elvis’ birthplace was built by his father, Vernon, with help from Vernon’s brother Vester and his father Jessie, whose relatively “spacious” four-room house sat next door. Located above a highway that transported locals between Tupelo and Birmingham, Alabama, and nestled among a group of small, rough-hewn homes along Old Saltillo Road. The house had no electricity (It was connected but it was not used due to the cost) or indoor plumbing, and was similar to housing constructed for mill villages around that time.
January 8, 1935, not long before dawn, Elvis Aaron Presley was born. Gladys delivered a second son earlier that morning, a stillborn identical twin named Jesse Garon. Elvis would be their only child. After the birth, Gladys was close to death and both she and Elvis were taken to Tupelo Hospital. After Gladys and Elvis returned home, it was noticed by family members and friends that she was overprotective of her new born son.
It was hard for Vernon to find a well paying job to support his new family because he lacked in the area of education which is probably the result of dropping out of school when he was in eighth grade, so financially, times were hard on Vernon and Gladys, and it got worse. On November 16, 1937, Vernon along with Gladys’ brother, Travis Smith and a friend Lether Gable were indicted for forgery. A check that Orville Bean had made out to Vernon had been altered and the culprits stood accused by Bean. Vernon had sold Bean a hog and received for it, a check for only $4, a sum much less than he had expected. Vernon was furious; as the hog was worth much more, and he had been counting on the money. There is no record of how the deal was arranged or for how much.
Vernon talked it over with Travis and Lether and an idea emerged, since Vernon “had been sold short,” why not make the check closer to the amount deserved? Courthouse records do not include details of how large a sum of money the check was altered to, but in her book “Elvis and Gladys” Elaine Dundy says that based on the memories of the people she talked with, it was either fourteen or forty dollars.
According to Vernon’s old friend Aaron Kennedy, he thinks the check was not altered but forged by putting a blank check over Orville Bean’s and tracing his writing on to it. In any case obviously none of the men had any idea of how a bank operates to prevent such fraud. Great pressure was put on Bean by the community of East Tupelo to show leniency toward the offenders, to no avail.
A bond for bail was fixed at $500 each. On January 4, 1938 only two bonds were filed for Travis and Lether Gable. Oddly the records show, Vernon’s father, JD Presley and JG Brown stood sureties for Travis Smith but not Vernon. At least there is no record of such so it appears that Vernon spent six months in custody awaiting trial. JD had apparently never liked Vernon. He had kicked him out of home at age 16. It was Elaine Dundy that uncovered this evidence but it is not possible to know the truth as there not finding a record does not prove Jessie did not bail his son. Elaine Dundy does conclude the worst. It should be pointed out (As Elaine Dundy does in her book) that J.D. was farming on Orville Bean’s land; Orville Bean was his landlord so it may have encouraged J.D. to stay on the “right side” of the landowner.
On May 25 1938, Vernon, Travis and Lether were sentenced to three years in the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman for forging the check. On Wednesday, June 1, Vernon, prisoner number 12231, was registered at the prison hospital in Parchman. He was twenty-one-year-old, five feet ten and one-half inches tall, and weighed 147 pounds. He described himself as a farmer. He could read and write and professed five years of schooling. Asked to identify his “primary family”, he chose to name neither his wife nor his mother but rather, pathetically, his father alone, “Jesse D. Presley”.
The first and third Sunday of every month were visiting days at Parchman and as soon Vernon had visiting privileges, Gladys with Elvis would come to visit him whenever she could find someone to drive her and Elvis to Parchman for those visits. In between Gladys and Vernon were writing back and forth. Vernon’s brother Noah Presley often drove her and other relatives to Parchman. Gladys would offer to pay the friends or relative for the gas and oil, if she could afford it or promise to pay later if she could not. It was a long drive about 4-5 hours each way. At camp 5, visitors would be screened for contraband and the allowed to pass into the area. At her first visit, Vernon would have been in prison garb, horizontal black and white stripes, loose top and baggy bottom. The meeting must have been emotional, and Elvis probably carried the whole scene of their first meeting in Parchman for the rest of his life, the memory not only of Parchman prison and his father in stripes, but also sense the fear of his father that the Presley’s would embrace. Gladys brother Travis would be there too. They would sit and talk. After a time, Vernon and Gladys would rise and move away from Travis and Elvis. They needed to talk privately, to be together. Probably they had sex, a practice allowed and even encouraged by the authorities. While his parents were gone, Elvis might have sat at the picnic-like table with the man who had driven them over or maybe with his uncles Travis or Noah.
Finally came the drive home, again 4-5 hours. And when the night come on, Elvis would crawl into the front seat and curled into his mother’s lap and would drift off to sleep. When they arrived their little house, Gladys strong arms lifting him up carefully, holding him against her chest and then lowering him to the bed. Maybe he felt his weight melt onto the mattress, his clothes being pulled gently off – and his mom crawled into bed beside him, holding him close. I’m sure that Elvis felt deeply his mom’s anguish – and his own. That’s may the reason why he was so close with his mother and could not do enough for her.
His aunt Lillian, a sister of Glady, often visited them during those bad winter months. She recalls: “Elvis had been walking and talking for some months now and I always would found him energetically dashing back and forth through the two rooms of the house. But each time he came to Gladys where she sat, he would pause, reached up to pat her on the head and tenderly say, “There, there, my little baby”. A next aunt of Elvis, Vernon’s younger sister Nashvale Loren, called “Nash” recalls: “I still can see a little Southern boy (Elvis) reaching up to grab Morning Glory blossoms from a vine my mom had running up on heavy string to shade the porch from the sun. He would grab a little fistful and run to his mom, Gladys, and my mom and stand there with his little face beaming, waiting to see if they would take him in their arms, hug him and tell him they loved him for being so thoughtful to bring then the pretty blue blossoms. Although there weren’t enough (flowers) to put in a vase, he would wait to see if they were going to put them in water – and of course, they did.”
Another family member was Sales Presley. First cousin of Vernon, and his wife Annie Cloud. They were living just one house south of Gladys and Elvis in 1937 and have been good comfort and support for Gladys at this rough period of her life. Annie also was a good friend of Gladys, both worked together at Tupelo Garment Company. They would remain friends all of their lives.
With Gladys unable to keep up the payments, the family had to move out of the Tupelo house where Elvis was born when the singer was only a few years old for lack of payment. Gladys lost the house and moved in briefly with her in-laws next door. At some point during Vernon’s prison sentence, Gladys moved out and stayed with her first cousin Frank Richards. Whatever the reason, the Presleys never return to the house Vernon built, stories differ as to the reason and how the house left their ownership.
But Gladys did more than visit Vernon in Parchman. Always in her mind was how to get Vernon out – and she got him released. She got up a petition, members of the congregation of East Tupelo wrote a letter to Governor White and pled for pardon. On December 16, 1938, Orville Bean also wrote this letter to Governor White in case of Vernon:
“Dear Governor,
This young man plead guilty at the May Term, 1938, of the Circuit Court of Lee Country, Mississippi, on charge of forgery, and was sentenced to serve three years in the State Penitentiary. This young man, who is twenty-three years of age and was raised here, has never been in any trouble whatever until this came up.
I bought a hog from Mr. Presley and gave him a check for it and he allowed two other young men to see the check and copy the signature and the other men forged checks on me and I understand they paid Presley about $ 15.00 of the money they got on the forged checks for allowing them to copy the signature of the legitimate check I gave him, and not saying anything about it, but when Presley was asked about the matter he told me the whole truth at the very beginning.
This young man has a wife and one small child that are in financial distress, and they need him very badly. He is not a bad man and has never been. The money was repaid to me and this man realizes the mistake he has made and I believe he has been sufficiently punished. He is a splendid young ma and if given a chance I confidently believe he will make a good and useful citizen and for these reasons I respectfully ask you to grant him a pardon.
Yours very truly,
O. S. Bean.
Due the petition of the citizen of Lee Country and the letter of Orville Bean, Mississippi Governor Hugh Lawson White was persuaded to sign the order to release Vernon from Parchman.On February 6, 1939, Vernon was released from Prison with a six month suspension of their sentence, granted on condition of continued good behavior. This leniency is the result of a “petition of the citizens of Lee County and on a letter from Mr. O. S. Bean, the party on whom the checks were forged.” The document is signed by Governor Hugh White. In 1940, Vernon was granted an indefinite suspension of his sentence. Evidently, if Vernon ever was angry with Orville Bean, he didn’t seem to hold a grudge as he brought a new four room house from him in 1945 on Berry Street in East Tupelo for $2000, with a down payment of $200 and monthly installments of $30 plus 6% interest. Just eleven months later, Vernon transferred the deed over to his friend Aaron Kennedy for $3,000 to avoid foreclosure proceedings. Immediately then, Aaron Kennedy gave Orville Bean a deed of trust, which is the same thing as a mortgage. The Presleys then moved into Tupelo, first to Commerce Street, then to Mulberry Alley, a small lane running beside the fairgrounds, just opposite the town’s black neighborhood, “Shake Rag”. Elvis’ fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Oleta Grimes, was Orville Bean’s daughter.