Perhaps not everyone knows that … Mississippi also has its Verona
Verona, Mississippi, hosted the wedding of Elvis Presley’s parents.
Founded in 1857 near the railway, in a strategic point of connection between the cities of Richmond and Pontotoc, the US equivalent of the city of the Scaligeri is in Mississippi, in Lee County. The name of Verona was chosen by the daughter of the owner of the land on which the first buildings were erected, a certain John Raftiff, who consented to his eldest daughter to baptize the first community formed around the railway with the name of the Italian city of love. Many of the residents of the nearby towns of Richmond, Camargo, Palmetto and City Point, in fact, moved to Verona due to the opportunities it offered thanks to the railway, both in travel and in terms of employment and quality of life.
Siding with the Confederate States of America, precisely because of its position, Verona held a fundamental role in the American Civil War, becoming one of the main recruiting camps and loading points for shipping soldiers and supplies to Virginia. The Veronese men formed a company known as the Verona Fusiliers and became part of the 41st Mississippi Infantry Regiment. It was in Verona that in 1864 General Nathan Bedford Forrest set up his headquarters.
In 1859 the first hotel in Lee County was opened in Verona and in the last two decades of the nineteenth century the city became one of the Mississippi’s most famous banking centersin which some of the oldest credit institutions in the United States were founded, including BancorpSouth.
Despite the demographic decline, following the new decision to move the railway route to Tupelo, Verona has retained a certain attractiveness in terms of tourism. This is also thanks to the conservation of some historical structures, such as that of today’s Blue Moon, the oldest in Lee County. This building, seat of the first city hall, earned Mississippian Verona, like that of Verona, the nickname of “city of love”. It was in this building, in fact, that the marriage of Vernon Presley and Gladys Love Smith, parents of the future of Rock and Roll Elvis Presley.