Practically everyone in the world knows the name Elvis Presley<\/a>. But the King of Rock \u2019n\u2019 Roll could just as easily have been named Elvis Wallace.<\/p>\n Elvis shared his famous last name with his father, Vernon Presley, and grandfather Jessie Presley, but his great-grandfather wasn\u2019t a Presley at all. That surname instead came from Elvis\u2019 great-grandmother Rosella Presley. A fiercely independent 19th century woman, Rosella never married but gave birth to several children from different fathers. And she gave all her kids her own last name.<\/p>\n Rosella never publicly revealed who Jessie\u2019s father was, so for years the name of Elvis\u2019 great-grandfather was unknown. But it was eventually revealed to be John Henry Wallace, a married man with a family of his own who had an affair with Rosella.<\/p>\n That means if Elvis had received his last name from his paternal great-grandfather, as is customary, then the household name we would all know today would be Elvis Wallace, not Elvis Presley. Meet the woman who\u2019s responsible for one of the most well-known names in music history. <\/p>\n Elvis Presley\u2019s Heritage Two-year-old Elvis Presley poses for a family portrait with his parents, Gladys and Vernon Presley, in 1937 in Tupelo, Mississippi<\/p>\n Elvis, born in 1935, was the son of Vernon Presley and Gladys Love Smith. Before his son rose to fame, Vernon worked a series of odd jobs\u2014including milkman, sharecropper, carpenter, and day laborer\u2014and demonstrated little career ambition, according to Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley<\/a> by Peter Guralnick. After Elvis became a successful musician, Vernon helped handle some of his son\u2019s business affairs, along with Elvis\u2019 notorious manager, Colonel Tom Parker<\/a>. Vernon died in Memphis in 1979, just two years after his son\u2019s untimely death.<\/p>\n Elvis\u2019 Early Years<\/p>\n Vernon was the son of Jessie McDowell Presley, Elvis\u2019 grandfather. Born in Fulton, Mississippi, in 1896, Jessie was an employee of Pepsi-Co Bottling Co. and recorded a few songs, himself<\/a>, for a music company in Louisville, Kentucky, though none of his records ever reached the market.<\/p>\n Jessie, who died in 1973 at age 76, was one of at least nine children born to Rosella Elizabeth Presley, Elvis\u2019 great-grandmother. If tradition had been followed, Jessie would have received his father\u2019s surname. But Rosella never had much regard for tradition.<\/p>\n An Independent Woman<\/p>\n Rosella was born in 1861, also in Fulton. Her father, Dunnan Presley, deserted her at an early age. He had four separate wives and never bothered to divorce any before abandoning them. Dunnan enlisted in the Confederate Army twice during the Civil War and deserted twice, each time collecting a substantial bounty from the government, according to Elvis Presley: A Southern Life<\/a> by Joel Williamson and Donald Lewis Shaw.<\/p>\n Due in part to this upraising, Rosella was a fiercely independent woman and one who seemed to care little for the institution of marriage. She never married, nor did she publicly identify the fathers of any of her children, according to Williamson and Shaw. By some accounts, she had as many as 10 kids by at least two men. <\/p>\n \u201cThis was a pioneer woman with a mind of her own and as much a taste for polyandry as her father for polygamy,\u201d Elaine Dundy wrote in the book Elvis and Gladys<\/a>. Keep Reading<\/p>\n Rosella gave all of her children her own surname: Presley. She raised her family from the profits of a series of small share-cropping farms for which she worked, according to Williamson and Shaw. Although she received very little education, she insisted all of her children go to school.<\/p>\n \u201cShe was a strict disciplinarian but a loving mother,\u201d said her son Joseph Presley, one of Elvis\u2019 great-uncles, according to Elvis and Gladys. \u201cDespite the hardships, she always managed to give each of us a little present at Christmas, even if it was only a piece of candy or a secondhand pair of shoes.\u201d<\/p>\n Elvis\u2019 Great Grandfather Revealed <\/p>\n Because Rosella never revealed the fathers of her children, the name of Jessie\u2019s father\u2014and Elvis\u2019 great-grandfather\u2014was unknown for years. Jessie\u2019s middle name was McDowell, so some people speculated that could have been the surname of his birth father, according to We Remember Elvis<\/a> by Azalia S. Moore.<\/p>\n In 2004, the genetic genealogy company DNA Consultants tested Elvis\u2019 DNA samples from bed sheets he had slept on in 1977. The company found Elvis\u2019 Y chromosome type, which is passed down from the male line, matched no Presleys in available databases, but it exactly matched several males of the surname Wallace from Itawamba County, Mississippi, according to the book Old World Roots of the Cherokee<\/a> by Donald Yates.<\/p>\n More Family Ties<\/p>\n Five years later, members of Elvis\u2019 extended family confirmed the truth: Jessie was the son of John Henry Wallace, a farmer, fiddle player, and Elvis\u2019 great-grandfather who was born in Tilden, Mississippi, in 1853.<\/p>\n Wallace was married to another woman named Almira Jane McFadden, and the two had at least nine children together, according to U.S. Census records from 1900<\/a> and 1910<\/a>. But Wallace developed an infatuation with Rosella Presley, who lived nearby, and their affair ultimately produced Elvis\u2019 grandfather, Jessie, according to Images of America: Itawamba County<\/a> by Mona Robinson Mills.<\/p>\n According to Mills, Jessie had confirmed the truth of his parentage to family members before his death. If Jessie and his male descendants had received his father\u2019s surname, then Elvis Presley would have been born Elvis Wallace. A solid name to be sure, it doesn\u2019t quite have the same ring to it.<\/p>\n Colin McEvoy joined the Biography.com staff in 2023, and before that had spent 16 years as a journalist, writer, and communications professional. He is the author of two true crime books: Love Me or Else and Fatal Jealousy. He is also an avid film buff, reader, and lover of great stories.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Key Takeaways: Elvis Presley\u2019s last name came from a great-grandmother on his father\u2019s side not a great-grandfather as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8801,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[264],"tags":[2015,18,117,19,17,337],"class_list":{"0":"post-8800","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-core","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-music"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8800"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8800\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"a](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/two-year-old-elvis-presley-poses-for-a-family-portrait-with-news-photo-1692124372.jpg\" "\\"Young")
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