Family detective: Elton John
By Nick Barratt

Telegraph family history

One of the most enduring and popular singers of his age, Elton John is a
colourful character with a colourful past. His first single was released in
1967; the song, called Scarecrow, had been written by a lyricist called
Bernie Taupin, and when the pair met for the first time shortly afterwards,
one of the most successful singer-songwriter partnerships in pop history was
forged.

Elton John, born Reginald Kenneth Dwight

Elton John was perhaps the most successful artist in the 1970s, and
continues to perform today. His musical talent is matched by his flamboyant
lifestyle and dress sense, leading to financial problems in the 1990s, which
forced him to sell off some of his costumes used during performances. In
1998 he was knighted for his service to music. Are there any colourful
characters in his family background?

Who is he related to?

Elton John was born Reginald Kenneth Dwight in 1947 in Pinner, north-west
London, to Stanley Dwight and Sheila Eileen Harris. Two years after the
Second World War, Stanley was still in the RAF as a Flight Lieutenant,
having enlisted a few years earlier. When they married in 1945, Stanley was
20 and Sheila only 19. It is clear that it was a turbulent relationship and
the couple were divorced in 1962.

Young Reggie found his military father an intimidating presence when he was
home on leave between long spells on duty. But if he experienced a difficult
childhood, it was partly alleviated at the age of three when he discovered
the piano. His parents encouraged him to play, and when he was old enough he
began to perform in local bars. Indeed, his father was also musical, having
played the trumpet in an American-style big band called Bob Miller and the
Millermen.

Despite Stanley's chosen career, it was Sheila's side of the family that had
earlier military connections. Her father, Frederick George Harris, served as
a soldier and was still enlisted at the time of his marriage to Ivy White in
1921. Aged 22, he had escaped the worst ravages of the First World War and
by the time his daughter was born, four years later, he had taken up the
somewhat less stressful job of tennis groundsman at a club near the family
home in Meeting House Lane, Peckham.

Ivy's background, in contrast, is shrouded in mystery. She was born in the
workhouse on New Year's Eve, 1899, and had two birth certificates dated 12
days apart. It appears that her father, a merchant seaman, abandoned her and
her mother at the dawn of a new century, and this was something Ivy never
forgot or forgave. On her marriage certificate, she renounced her real
father and put down the name of her step-father, Robert Whatling, instead.

The Dwight family was comprised mainly of artisans and labourers. Stanley
was born in Erith, Kent, in 1925 to Edwin Dwight, a cable hand at a local
cable-making factory, and his wife Ellen Shirley. It was a long marriage,
having started in 1906 when Edwin was following the family profession as a
bootmaker in his county of birth, Buckinghamshire. He was born in Chesham
where his father William's workshop was located. Previously, his lineage was
rooted in the land - William's father James was an agricultural labourer,
living and working in Ashley Green, a hamlet in Chesham, throughout the
mid-19th century.

His marriage certificate survives and shows that both bride and groom were
illiterate and that at least one previous generation toiled on the land as a
seasonal worker at a local farm or estate.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the patriarchs of the Shirley family were also
agricultural labourers in the same area, although Ellen's father, George,
spent some time making chairs in the 1870s and 1880s before returning to the
land by 1891. By then, three branches of the family had moved next door to
one another.

What's in a name?

The surname Dwight is a derivation of DeWitt, which originally comes from
the Flemish for white or blond. Therefore, it is likely that some of Elton's
earliest ancestors came from the Low Countries, and had blond or fair hair.