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Rogers Family
Author Unknown

“Elifus Rogers, grandfather, was born in South Carolina, a slave in 1832. His mother, Anna, was a slave woman with seven children-4 boys and 3 girls. Father, Will McDuffin Rogers, was 12 years old when they moved to Mississippi and settled in Punkin Creek on Yellow Leaf Farm in Lafayette County. He and wife, Katie Oliver, married in 1916 and begat four boys and three girls. Most of his life, the Reverend Missionary Baptist Will Rogers farmed his own land. About 20 of those years he worked on the Illinois Central Railroad from Water Valley to Memphis and into Illinois. In 1941, the farm boy turned railroad man quit the railroad and lived in Pontotoc County with his family. When his wife died, he lived with his twin daughter, Mrs. Allean Pearson and her family in the house off the road behind the Kiami Pool Facility.

For recreation, all he cared for then was to play his banjo and his older sister played the guitar. He said that he was up in years when he was called to preach.

Rogers, page two
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Reverend Will Rogers. Date unknown. Photograph from unidentified newspaper article.

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