On The Trail of a Welcome Stranger: Finding Orville Bean

Mr. and Mrs. Orville Bean

Orville Bean was the man whose dispute with Vernon Presley, Elvis Presley's father, sent Presley to the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman Farm (a chain gang, run with unpaid prison labor), in a dispute over the price of a hog. Bean is quite a mystery man, but as you will see, some of that mystery is beginning to unravel. After intensive research, which is ongoing, some details of his background and family history have emerged, and are presented here. The search is vital to an understanding of how a small farmer in a little "townlett" that only lasted a little longer than a decade, amassed so much local power. (And it should be emphasized that this power was localized to East Tupelo.)

Wiley Hopkins Bean (nee "Beene")
(1831-1902)

Bean was born in 1888, in Mississippi, to Wiley Hopkins Bean (1831-1902) and Mary Wood (1854-1922) . Wiley Hopkins Bean (nee "Beene") was born in Georgia, but his family moved to Mississippi when he was young, and settled in Itawamba County to farm. By "farm," it is clear from Wiley Bean's Last Will and Testament, this means to own land. The following is at the end of his Will:

To my beloved wife Mary Roena Beene and our children, Dewitt Beene, Orville Stone Beene, Archie Tracey Beene, Nolia Roena Beene and Wiley Holder Beene, after all my just debts are paid I give and bequeath all the remainder or balance of my property, including all livestock of every kind and description, all crops and provisions, tools, vehicles, money notes, accounts and debts that may be due me.

Twelveth- to my beloved wife Mary Roena Beene and our five children named in the eleventh article just above, I give and bequeathe the following real property, viz, The North half (N 1/2) of Section Thirteen (13), Township nine (9) of range seven (7) in Itawamba County, Mississippi.

Thirteenth I hereby nominate and appoint Mary Roena Beene my executrix and my son Lonnie Hopkins Beene my executor of this my Last Will and Testament.

Witness this my signature this day of Feb 20 1900 1899  (In the original, 1900 is marked through and 1899 written above)

Signed  Wiley H Beene

Witnessed by

W. B. Brown, J. Y. Cunningham and Harlem Beene.

 (The name "Orville Stone Beene" is emphasized by me in bold typeface.)

Wiley H. Bean Last Will and Testament
Page 1

It is clear that Bean inherited significant property and land, and like his father, was indeed a powerful man in Northeast Mississippi. Since they were farmers, they owned significant plots of farmland in Itawamba County, Mississippi.

Wiley H. Bean Last Will and Testament
Page 2

After his sophomore year in high school, Orville Bean did not further his education. According the 1940 census, he was a "farm operator," and was entirely self-employed. Although he told the census he worked 40 hours per week, he listed his income as "0." Bean lived in Lee County, Mississippi with his wife Agnes, ten years his junior.They had a daughter named Oleta. Bean had also been married to Nannie Mae Sheffield. 

Orville Stone Bean, circa 1935
Back Row, Right
The year Elvis Presley was born

Bean apparently owned much of the land on which East Tupeloeans lived in the 1930s and '40s, when East Tupelo was a distinct town. According to Elaine Dundy's interview with Aaron Kennedy, Bean was a "politician," through he doesn't appear to have held an office. Kennedy: Page 118: "Orville Bean was a politician. He made his money by taking advantage of people and keeping them indebted--quite a few other people besides Vernon." (Dundy, 1985, p. 118) He owned the land (we will determine exactly how much, in this ongoing investigation), and he owned a dairy farm, but nothing so grand as the famed Ruff Dairy in Tupelo proper. He appeared to own significant bottom-land for cotton as well, judging by his inheritance from Wiley Beene. The problem, for now, is precision. As soon as I know you how much of East Tupelo Bean actually owned, I can then explain the details of why he had the power to change the Presleys's lives forever, and in what capacity he was "a politician" in the area.

As for his family, he came from "solid" yet rural roots. When married with his own family, he lived in the humble circumstances of many Mississippi landowners. His daughter became a school teacher, ironically later helping the Presleys' only child with his singing career, early on. Oleta (Bean) Grimes appears to have been a lovely person, based on much available evidence. 

It is her father, though, who still remains something of a mystery. Land was power in the Mississippi of the early 20th century, and I am following, not the money, but the dirt. The dirt he owned, and upon which poor people both lived and worked.

Don't touch that dial; we'll be back with the full story of East Tupelo, Orville Bean's history of power over some of the weakest people in Lee County, and why he was able to change Elvis Presley's very young life forever.

Meanwhile, I leave you with this music.



References: Elaine Dundy, Elvis and Gladys. Macmillan, 1985. First Edition. William Balfour Ruff, Oral history with Mr. Balfour William Ruff, as interviewed by Kathryn Stephens. F341.5 .M57 vol. 746, pt. 2. University of Southern Mississippi. Center for Oral History and Cultural Heritage, 1999-11-12. and University of Southern Mississippi Libraries. (electronic version), 2002-09-25 (digital reproduction). http://www.lib.usm.edu/legacy/spcol/coh/cohruffb.html Mike Freeman, "Mrs. Oleta Grimes" from My Written Stuff, 24, January, 2012. http://michaelwfreem.blogspot.com/2012/01/founder-of-elvis-presley-birthplace.html Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census. 1940. Lee County, Mississippi. Beene/Bean photos made public on the Internet's World Wide Web by John Griggs39 of ancestry.com. Ancestry.com. Public Member Photos & Scanned Documents [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2006. Original data: Family tree photos submitted by Ancestry members. Note: Orville Stone Bean is a public historical figure, and these public photos are reproduced here under the fair use provisions of U.S. Copyright law for educational purposes.

©Robin Markowitz, 2013. All Rights Reserved.

Definitions

"Before examining the history of Mississippi’s white tenant farmers and sharecroppers, some definition of the terms might be helpful. Both tenant farmers and sharecroppers were farmers without farms. A tenant farmer typically paid a landowner for the right to grow crops on a certain piece of property. Tenant farmers, in addition to having some cash to pay rent, also generally owned some livestock and tools needed for successful farming.
Sharecroppers, on the other hand, were even more impoverished than tenant farmers. With few resources and little or no cash, sharecroppers agreed to farm a certain plot of land in exchange for a share of the crops they raised. The exact amount of crops the sharecropper gave over to the landowner depended on the agreement with the landowner."

"Farmers Without Land: The Plight of White Tenant Farmers and Sharecroppers" by Charles C. Bolton

From:  "Mississippi History Now," an on-line publication of the Mississippi Historical Society.

Next, a page from: 

Lumbee Indians in the Jim Crow South: Race, Identity, and the Making of a Nation

By Malinda Maynor Lowery

Almost from the time I first started reading about the Presley's circumstances, I have had a problem resolving what Tupelo residents called "farmed for shares." It seemed like a different arrangement from other tenant farming/sharecropping systems around the south. When I finally read James Agee's and Walker Evans' classic Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, and read of the difference between "half-croppers" and other tenants, I was bewildered. What was it that Vernon and Gladys actually DID in Tupelo for Bean, and how did Vernon's "employer" come also to be his landlord? And if he was his employer, then Vernon couldn't have been a sharecropper! Not according the standard definitions, which are delineated here.

Or so it seemed.

The problem here is that Vernon Presley paid the same man for the land upon which he lived (rent), did jobs for that same man, and "farmed for shares" for that man (either he did it, or Gladys did so, depending on Bean's needs for Vernon to drive the truck for the dairy farm). So into what category described in Lowery's book, and the state site, does he fit?

Was he a tenant or a sharecropper? And, if he fit into one of the categories, which category? A tenant, a half-cropper, a third-cropper?  All - and yet, none, exactly. Although he paid rent for the little frame house he had built, he was not paid a flat wage, but "farmed for shares." This work was alongside driving Bean's milk delivery truck. Gladys turned more to the cotton work after Elvis's birth. Vernon had some autonomy to own tools and even a little livestock (a hog), but in sharecropping, Vernon and the other workers (including his own father, and wife) were entirely beholden to this same man on whose land they lived to survive there.

Bean had fashioned his own plantation system in East Tupelo,  creating just the exploitative conditions he personally needed.

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These are some photographs of the Tupelo house that Vernon built, with his father's assistance. They are all from the archives of For Elvis CD Collectors, FECC Forum. These photos were posted by user "KHoots." Thanks also to "ColinB." http://www.elvis-collectors.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=52592&p=757956&hilit=swing+Tupelo#p757956

Thanks to FECC for their wonderful archive. These photographs are not to be reproduced ANYWHERE! It needs to be mentioned that they are on this "Elvis Express Radio" page: Elvis' Tupelo Birthplace: Elvis Express Radio. The original copyrights belong to whomever TOOK the photographs, which is not presently determined in either location. They were first published in the October,  1964 issue of Elvis Monthly. Vernon himself showed them around.

These photographs seem to be from the 1950s, or perhaps earlier, when the house was in some sort of use. As you can see, there was no charming Porch Swing, and Vernon had the idea to attach the privy to the back of the house. I will post more information about the Tupelo house here in a few days.

This next photo is one I took, in 1981. It is my father sitting on the porch of the Tupelo house after it had become a tourist attraction in the wake of Elvis Presley's death on August 16, 1977.

Photo, Copyright ©1981, Robin Markowitz. All Rights Reserved.

I will be adding more original photos, that I took, of the boards of the house, in close-up, in the next few days. Photos of the farmland in Tupelo, though, are difficult to come by.

According to Elaine Dundy's research, Gladys farmed soon after the baby's birth by putting Elvis in the tow sack with the the cotton she picked. This was his first amusement "ride." Here is Evans' photo of 10-year-old Lucille Burroughs, picking cotton in Hale County, Alabama, in 1936. It's not far over the Mississippi border, and not very far from Tupelo.

This is what Gladys Presley did during harvesting season, with baby Elvis plopped in the cotton sack that she dragged along the rows.

Next. is a filmed view of life in the south in the 1930s; this is newsreel footage of the cotton harvesting process, and I apologize for the offensive, absurd remarks about the workers by the narrator, but here you see what Vernon and Gladys did in the fields:

Next time, we'll look in more depth at the two men who would soon be headed on a collision course: Vernon Presley and Orville Bean.

________________________________________________

General References: Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley by Peter Guralnick Little, Brown and Company; 1st edition (October 3, 1994) Elvis and Gladys by Elaine Dundy Macmillan Pub Co; 1St Edition edition (June 1985)

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©Robin Markowitz, 2013. All Rights Reserved.

Born Strange: Introduction

Elvis Presley's First Photo
1938, Mississippi St. Penitentiary
At Parchman Farm

When Elvis Presley was born in Tupelo, Mississippi in 1935, he was born a stranger. A stranger in what most Americans, even in "The Great Depression," called "no man's land." He lived across the tracks and the levee, in East Tupelo, a separate town, then. Only for the poor whites, but perhaps not the absolute poorest whites of all. That status was to come a little later for Elvis, his father and mother.

As most people know, he wasn't born an only child, but he became one instantly. His brother, born first, could not get his breath, and he died at birth. Whether he was "stillborn" or actually gasped is something no one can really know. What is known is that his father Vernon Elvis Presley, buried Jesse Garon Presley, in what had been an unmarked grave in the Priceville Cemetery. A reliable child-friend insists that Elvis knew where the grave was, though it can never be entirely clear, as the baby was buried in a shoe-box, initially without a grave marker. 

Tupelo historian Roy Turner interviewed a former child-friend of Elvis, James Ausborn, about the grave, and Ausborn says he and Elvis knew where it was.

Jesse Garon
©Anthony Stuchbury. All Rights Reserved.

A photo was taken of a small, uninscribed stone, next to Elvis's Uncle Noah's grave, in the cemetery. This is the photo: ©Anthony Stuchbury. All Rights Reserved.

The doctor who came, in an emergency, filled out info on both baby boys. He and his sick mother stayed in the hospital for two weeks, paid for "by the welfare." His mother worked while pregnant, her legs swelling, and becoming increasingly ill. She had to.

While it's hard to imagine deeper poverty, there was deeper poverty to come. We'll learn how the state of Mississippi was essentially run by its agricultural landlords: they called the shots, and the politicians answered. Vernon would deal with that state of affairs shortly. He ended up in Parchman Farm, a chain gang, in a dispute over the price of a hog. With the landlord. The man who owned the land upon which he lived, and who also employed him. Orville Bean owned almost all the land "'cross the tracks" for both blacks and whites who were the poorest, and employed most of the poor people. 

In 1936, a fearful storm thrashed Tupelo to shreds, killing over 200 people, most of them blacks who lived in what was called "Tin Town" then.

And then it got worse.

You just don't cross your landlord.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLOrB6z6JuE&feature=youtube_gdata_player

©Robin Markowitz, 2013. All Rights Reserved.