Hi Ya'll,
I'm not even sure I want to jump into the middle of this but (selfishly) any research done could help me jump a brick wall I've looked at for years. (My 4th g-grandmother's name maybe?)
No one seems to have brought up the subject, but there's evidence that Elvis may have had Tuscarora ancestry. I have an extensive DNA database of the descendants of my 4th g-grandfather [Dunning Casiah|Casiah-2] (bc 1729) and several of his siblings, plus my family and other members of the Tuscarora and Lumbee Tribes.
I descend from Dunning Casiah's daughter [Elizabeth Casiah|Casiah-28] b 1787, who married Enoch Smith in Rowan Co. NC in 1805. She appears to have been living with Charles Presley and Mary "Polly" Casiah Presley in Rowan Co. at the time, as both of her parents died by 1800.
I match a descendant of [Charles Presley|Presley-363] & Mary "Polly" Casiah, and a descendant of [John Presley|Presley-353]'s. Charles and John were both sons of Andrew Presley. The Casiahs and the Presleys were next neighbours in Camden, Kershaw/ Lancaster Co. SC.
John married Elizabeth Hall in 1779, but there is suspicion that he 1st married one of the Casiah daughters - possibly Nancy or Margaret - and that [Dunning John Presley|Presley-3 ] was the child of that marriage. Otherwise, there should be no reason I would match his descendants.
I will say as a caveat that the segment matches are between people who are 12 generations apart, so they are not large. Looking at Gedmatch's 'Q' segments for the descendant of Dunning John Presley's they range from 26 to 40. I'd like to analyze all of that data again but my Tier 1 sub has run out and I messed up my Paypal account. I will do the analysis as soon as I'm able to get Paypal working again. I'm also willing to post the results of this analysis, with images, once I get my Tier 1 issues straightened out.
On my spreadsheet, all my Presley descendant matches fall into runs of much larger segment matches of more recent relatives in the same family. I began doing genealogy in 1971, and my documentation on this line extends from my father's generation back to before the Tuscarora assumed European-style surnames.
I work with genetics as part of my job as director of a non-profit which supports and advocates for people with a group of ultra-rare genetic disorders, and I've worked with genetics teams from Harvard, Howard Hughes, and Ulm (Germany), so I'm fluent in medical genetics, which has been a great help.
While analyzing the results of DNA tests done at our family reunion in 2016 I found a segment pattern unique to descendants of one man who lived appx 1630 - 1700. He was foundational to today's Tuscarora Nation. There was a population bottleneck in the early and mid-1700s caused by war, European diseases, and aggressive slave-raiding, so about 50% of today's Tuscarora share one male ancestor and one, or both, of his two wives. This segment persists for appx six-seven generations before disappearing. I haven't found it in *anyone* who does not have Tuscarora ancestry. There are several other places on the genome where identical segments of shared Native DNA can be seen, but this one segment is unique to all his descendants to the sixth generation.
Both the Presley descendants I match have it. With Charles and Polly's descendants it is almost certainly because Polly passed it on. But there is no reason John Presley's descendants would have it unless he married a daughter of Dunning Casiah and Dunning John Presley Sr. was her son. If that is true then Elvis inherited Native American ancestry through that line.
DNA aside, it would be very helpful if we could locate a marriage record or any documentation referring to that marriage. I am in Canada and have no access to records that are not online. The American cousins I worked with for 40+ years have all passed away.
Is there anyone willing to tackle marriage records for SC for the period? (1778-1785) Assuming there are any! The last name, Casiah, can be spelled almost any way. Our research group found 45 different spellings of it since they appear to have adopted the Skarù·ręʔ word for "my nuclear family" (Kčę’heh) as a surname in the 1740s and there's simply is no way to render the Skarù·ręʔ pronunciation into English.
Happy rooting, or as we say in Skarù·ręʔ
Oneh - I go
Deb