Elvis’ Great, Great, Great, Great, Great, Great, Great, Great Grandfather

I was going to wait for the weekend to post this one, but decided to do it earlier. If you are like me and self isolating, you could use something  to take your mind off all the scary news for a few minutes.

How about a repost of an April 2008 ElvisBlog article?  Like last week, it has no pictures, but I think you’ll find it very interesting reading.  My original title was “A Voyage of Suffering … to the Land of Promise,” which I took from the third chapter of a wonderful study about Elvis’ family history: The Rhineland to Graceland, by Donald W. Presley and Edwin C. Dunn.  Here is an excerpt.

The more recent Elvis genealogy charts reveal that his surname changed from the Germanic Pressler to the anglicized Presley several centuries ago. In fact, if you go back through nine generations of Elvis’ family, you can pinpoint his Pressler ancestor who crossed the Atlantic in 1710 to start the whole bloodline here in America. His name was Johann Valentine Pressler.

Elvis Presley Bloodline

Johann Valentine Pressler                           1669 — About 1742

     Andreas Pressler (Andrew Presley)       1701 — About 1759

         Andrew Presley Jr.                                1733 — ?

             John Presley                                      About 1748 — ?

                 Dunnen Presley                             About 1780 — ?

                     Dunnen Presley Jr.                   1827 — 1900

                         Rosella Presley                     1862 — 1924

                             Jesse Dee Presley             1896 — 1973

                                 Vernon Elvis Presley     1916 — 1979

                                     Elvis Aron Presley     1935 — 1977

Valentine Pressler was Elvis’ Great, Great, Great, Great, Great, Great, Great, Great Grandfather. He was a vineyard worker in the Palatinate region of the Rhineland in southern Germany. With his wife Anna and five children, he left the vineyards and sailed off to America with hopes of new freedom and opportunities.

What he found was not what he hoped, but it was far better than the situation he was fleeing from back in Germany. Life in The Rhineland was abysmal in 1709. For the previous three generations, the countryside had endured the passage of marching armies and the destruction they left behind. There had been decades of warfare between France and Germany for the control of nearby Alsace. Troops from one side or the other were always moving toward battle through the area where Valentine lived, trampling, looting, and burning everything as they went. Famine, pain, pestilence, and death were left in their place.

That wasn’t all. The German rulers subjected their subjects to extremely heavy taxation. The Black Plague was so bad that the population was decreasing. And starting in October of 1709, the area experienced the most severe winter cold in more than a century. With the destruction of the precious grapevines, Valentine Pressler began to consider making a change so his family could survive. He was forty years old.

Meanwhile, the English governors in America needed workers to make their lands profitable, so pamphlets and small books were produced to entice the Germans to escape their wretched existence and find a new life in America. Free land and no taxes were promised. Valentine and thousands of other Germans made the decision to go to America and see what opportunities might open up for them there.

On December 21, 1709, Valentine Pressler agreed to a covenant with the British Crown. In exchange for passage to America, plus settlement and support, the Germans would be, in effect, indentured servants to the British government – for an unspecified time. They would be assigned to the Governor of New York and would be employed in the manufacture of naval stores (tar, pitch, resin). When the Governor judged their obligations met, each German man was to receive a grant of forty acres of land.

By December 29, 1709, the Pressler family started their trek down the Rhine River on a flat-bottomed boat. Each night, it would dock on the shore, where the Presslers would cook their food and sleep on the ground. They had to contend with rapids in the 38-mile long Rhine Gorge. There were delays due to adverse weather, and they were repeatedly stopped and required to pay tolls charged by a never-ending succession of feudal lords along the river. The trip down the Rhine to Rotterdam in The Netherlands lasted approximately four-to-six weeks.

The next part of the trip, a voyage from Rotterdam to London, was short and uneventful.

Within a week after arriving in London, Valentine and his family boarded their last ship – the one that would take them to America. They had no way of knowing they would be imprisoned in it for the next six months.   They were part of a ten-ship convoy that was supposed to be escorted by Royal Navy ships. When the Navy refused, confusion reigned. The ships couldn’t stay tied up in the harbor on the Thames and block other traffic, so they slowly sailed along the southern coast of England for three months, occasionally docking at Portsmouth and Plymouth. It took until April 10, 1710, to get things settled and finally set sail to America.

All the Germans were jammed into cargo holds only 5 feet high. There were no provisions for light or fresh air. Food served to them was cold, and the drinking water was dirty. Typhus broke out and slowly decimated the passengers. Fortunately, Valentine and his family were spared the disease, and around July 1, 1710, they landed in New York Harbor. Happy times, but there were more frustrations for the Presslers to endure.

The city government did not want all these sick immigrants to come into their city. They decided to send the Germans to Nutten Island (now Governor’s Island). Huts and tents were quickly constructed, and sufficient foodstuffs were provided.   As the Germans came back to good health, they were moved upstate to settlements along the Hudson River to begin their required work in naval stores production. For some reason, Valentine stayed in New York City. Authors Presley and Dunn speculate that he found work in the Governor’s gardens or the gardens of some of the wealthier citizens.

Over the next two decades, Valentine and his family moved several times.  His final place of residence was in Prince George’s Parish (County), Maryland, where he lived with, or near, his oldest son Andrew. Valentine’s name last surfaced in an election petition in 1742. He was 73-years-old, an advanced age for this time. Although he did not achieve his dream of land ownership, he may have lived long enough to see his son Andrew purchase 100 acres in 1745.

Authors Presley and Dunn, ended their chapters on Valentine Pressler as follows: “If his goal in America was land ownership, then he was perhaps less than successful, but if freedom and opportunity for his children was his goal, then he was indeed a great success. He had established the family bloodline in the New World.”

Nine generations later, that lineage led to Elvis Presley.

© 2008   Philip R Arnold   All Rights Reserved   www.ElvisBlog.net

I intend to keep reposting old ElvisBlog articles.  My blog platform is paid up for the year, and it takes very little time to repost compared to creating new ones.  And I’m having lots of fun reading through the old ones looking for the best to use again.