Morgan Fairchild By James PylantDO NOT PUBLISH OR POST WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION The original actress to play "Jenna Wade" in the television series Dallas, Morgan Fairchild had an interesting parallel to that character. She is a Dallas native and her grandfather was in the oil business. One of her first name-making roles came in 1981 with the NBC-TV series Flamingo Road as "Constance Carlyle," the wealthy secret love child of "Lute-Mae" (Stella Stevens). The next year, Morgan Fairchild played a stalking victim opposite Stevens’s son, Andrew Stevens, in the thriller, The Seduction.1 "I know my mother told me 30 years ago that a search had proved I’d be eligible to join the DAR, but not sure where she got that," Morgan tells me.2 Research into her family’s background, though, reveals the roots of Ms. Fairchild – both paternal and maternal – were in the American colonies in the Revolutionary War era. Morgan Fairchild comes from a family of educators – her mother and grandmother taught school, and her grandfather and a grand-uncle were school superintendents. The strikingly beautiful actress with the equally impressive stage name was born Patsy Anne McClenny on 3 February 1950 in Dallas to Edward Milton McClenny and Martha Jane Hartt.3 She has a younger sister, the actress Cathryn Hartt.4 Edward Milton McClenny was born 28 February 1919 and died 27 July 19995 in Dallas.6 Milton McClenny was eleven years old in 1930, the year of the fifteenth federal census enumeration. He appears as Melton McClenny, age eleven, born in Texas, in the household of his widowed mother, Susie M. McClenny, age forty-three, born in Texas, at 3111 Daniels, at University Park, Dallas County. Others in the household were older sister, Beulah, age thirteen, and his younger siblings: Jacob R., age nine; Annie, age eight; Ferrell, age six; and David, age four.7 Morgan Fairchild’s paternal grandfather, Silas Milton McClenny, died four years before the 1930 census. Silas M. McClenny died at age fifty-two at his Dallas home on 17 December 1926. Children named in his obituary were four sons, Milton, J. R., Ferrell and David, and two daughters, Beulah Mae and Annie Lee.8 His wife, Susie Mae (McGlamery) McClenny, was born in Emory, Rains County, Texas.9 At age thirteen, Susie M. McGlamery (born in October, 1886) appears in the household of her father, Jacob McGlamery, a Tennessee-born blacksmith, in Stephens County, Texas.10 Her brother, Bert McGlamery, served nearby Eastland County’s education system as county superintendent.12 Martha Jane Hartt, a Dallas native,13 was born 31 July 1924.14 A retired teacher, Mrs. McClenny died 4 May 1999 in Dallas. Martha Jane (Hartt) McClenny graduated from Southern Methodist University. In 1981, she retired after teaching English at Richardson High School for twenty-four years.15 Her parents were Grover Hartt, a Dallas attorney, and Mattie B. Harnesberger.16 In 1930, Grover Hartt, age forty-three, born in Texas, was the manager of an oil company, when the federal census was enumerated that year. Others in the household included wife Mattie B., age thirty-one, born in Texas; Grover, Jr., age eight-and-a-half; and five-year-old Martha J., both born in Texas; and brother-in-law Gordon Harnesberger, a twenty-eight-year-old Texas-born dentist.17 Grover Hartt started his law career with a practice in Ranger, Eastland County, in 1919. He relocated to Dallas the following year, where he founded the Hartt Petroleum Company.18 However, the census enumeration for 1920 shows thirty-three-year-old Grover Hartt, working in the oil business, and wife Mattie B., age twenty-seven, renting a dwelling in Austin, Travis County. Living with the Hartts were Mattie’s sisters, Mozell Harnesberger, age eighteen, and Norma Harnesberger, age fourteen. All were Texas natives.19 Mattie B. Harnesberger – Morgan Fairchild’s maternal grandmother – was born on 6 February 1892 in Beckville, Panola County, Texas, to Robert Fulton Harnesberger and Fletcher Jane20 Biggs.21 She and Grover Hartt married in 1913 in Timpson.22 "My sister has a copy of a letter from my grandfather around 1913," Ms. Fairchild says. "He was also superintendent of a school system around then, too."23 Mattie Harnesberger Hartt, who taught in public schools at Tenaha, Timpson and Austin until 1920, took a prominent role in the Dallas City Council of Parent-Teacher Associations.24 She first appears in census enumerations in 1900 in the household of R. F. Harnesberger, a forty-two-year-old physician, born in January of 1858 in Georgia to Georgia parents. Others in the family include: wife Fletcher, age thirty-two (born in August, 1867 in Texas); son Robert F., age nine (born July, 1890); daughter Mattie B., age eight (born in February, 1892), daughter Odessa, age two (born in August, 1897), and son Gordon B., age five months (born December, 1899). All of the Dr. and Mrs. Harnesberger’s children were born in Texas.25 Fletcher Biggs, at age twelve, is listed as the daughter of Joseph Biggs on the rolls of the 1880 Census of Panola County, Texas. He was a forty-four-year-old farmer, and his wife, Martha, was age thirty-eight. Both were Georgia natives. The couple had four other children: Willie, age ten; Mittie, age eight; Eva, age six; and James, age one. All five children were born in Texas.26 By 1910, Fletcher Harnesberger died and her husband remarried. The 1910 Census lists Panola County physician Robert F. Harnesberger, age fifty, with a wife named Lula, age thirty-eight, born in Georgia. The census indicates that they had been married less than a year, and that it was his second marriage and her first. His children are: Robert, Jr., age nineteen; Mattie P., age eighteen; Odessa, age twelve; Gordon B., age ten; Thelma M., age eight; and Norma, age five.27 As shown above, Mattie Harnesberger Hart’s sisters lived with her at the time of the 1920 census enumeration. However, they are enumerated twice; Mozell, age seventeen, and Norma, age fifteen, are the two youngest children in the household of sixty year-old physician Robert Harnesberger, wife Lola, age fifty; daughter Odessa, age twenty-one; son Gorden B., and age nineteen.28 In 1930, Lola Harnesberger, age sixty-one, appears on the census schedule that year as a widow, in Beckville, Panola County.29 The 1870 Census of Panola County, shows J. E. Biggs, age thirty-six, a farmer, with Martha, age twenty-nine; Sarah, age eleven, at school; Fletcher, age three; and William, age three months. Sarah, like her parents, was a Georgian, and the two younger children are listed as Texas natives. The real estate of J. E. Biggs had a value of $320.00, while that of his personal property was estimated at $250.00.30 Fletcher Biggs was born in Texas the same year her parents came to the state. Morgan’s great-great-grandfather, Joseph E. Biggs, came to Beckville, Panola County, Texas, in 1867, from Georgia. Private Joseph E. Biggs, of Company C, 3rd Georgia Cavalry of the Confederate States Army, had enlisted on 28 April 1862, in Columbus, Georgia, and served until May of 1865. "I was with Johnson’s Army in North Carolina at the Surrender," Mr. Biggs stated when applying for a pension in 1909. By that year, the seventy-three-year-old was disabled, according to a written statement given by R. F. Harnesberger, M. D.31 In 1860, twenty-three-year-old Joseph E. Biggs farmed in Talbot County, Georgia. The federal census enumeration that year shows his real estate valued at $800.00 and personal property worth $3,752.00. He and Martha E., age eighteen, had one child, Sarah T., age ten months.32 Joseph E. Biggs and Martha E. Carter were married 28 October 1858 in Talbot County.33
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