Governors, Congressmen, and Kinfolk: The Extraordinary Story of LL and Sallie Mayes
Belhaven Heights Historic District, Jackson, Mississippi. Wikimedia Commons. Used under applicable Creative Commons license.
Greenwood Cemetery has more than its fair share of political royalty.
Governors, senators, congressmen, judges, military heroes, mayors, legislators, state-wide elected officials and civic leaders all rest beneath its trees. Yet when it comes to pure political bloodlines — the sheer concentration of governors, congressmen, Supreme Court connections, university chancellors, and Mississippi dynasties converging into one marriage — it would be hard to top Lucius Lamar “LL” Mayes and his wife Sallie Harris Mayes.
They may well have been Mississippi’s ultimate power couple.
Ironically, neither one of them ever held elected office nor had any children so this dynasty forever rests at Greenwood.
Yet together they represented an astonishing web of Mississippi political and social history stretching from the territorial era into the twentieth century. Their marriage effectively united four major Mississippi political dynasties: the Lamars, the Harrises, the McWillies, and the Tuckers.
And because this is Mississippi, the family tree quickly becomes a contact sport.
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Chart created by the author as a guide for tours.
We realize this story involves enough Sallies, Fannies, governors, congressmen, and cousins to require its own referee crew. That is why we included the family chart at the top of the article.
To help make sense of it all, we have placed three asterisks (***) beside the names of every person in this story who is buried at Greenwood Cemetery. As you will notice fairly quickly…that turns out to be a lot of them.
We’ll follow the old rule of “Ladies first” and begin with Sallie Harris Mayes*** (look to the right side of the chart), who we’ll call “Our Sallie” because there are multiple Sallies involved in this story.
Our Sallie’s mother was Sallie McWillie Harris*** (we’ll call her “Mama Sallie”). Mama Sallie was married to James Bowmar Harris***, whose father was Congressman Wiley P. Harris*** — also a circuit judge and a delegate to three of Mississippi’s Constitutional Conventions.
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Original photographs of Edward Mayes and Fanny Lamar Mayes. Original images from historical/public domain sources. This composite image was digitally restored, merged, and AI-colorized for presentation purposes. Composite created for Greenwood Cemetery historical interpretation project, 2026.
Wiley Harris married Frances “Fanny” Mayes Harris***, which connected the Harris family to another of Mississippi’s most influential intellectual and political families.
Fanny’s half-brother was Edward Mayes*** — Chancellor at Ole Miss, dean of the old Millsaps College School of Law, and husband of Fannie Lamar Mayes***, daughter of Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar.
Yes, that L.Q.C. Lamar: Congressman. Senator. Secretary of the Interior. United States Supreme Court Justice. Still the only Mississippian ever to sit on the nation’s highest court.
But the Harris side was only half of Our Sallie’s remarkable lineage.
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Mama Sallie and her three siblings (all of whom are buried at Greenwood) occupied a nearly unmatched position in Mississippi genealogy because both of their grandfathers had served as Governor of Mississippi and both had also served in Congress.
One was William McWillie and the other was Tilghman Tucker.
Mama Sallie’s mother was Sallie Tucker*** — yet another Sallie — and the daughter of Governor Tilghman Tucker. Sallie Tucker married William McWillie Jr.***, son of Governor and Congressman William McWillie.
Their daughter became Sallie McWillie Harris, mother of “Our Sallie.”
That means Sallie Harris Mayes was the great-granddaughter of two Mississippi governors and congressmen, granddaughter of Congressman Wiley P. Harris, grandniece of Chancellor Edward Mayes, and descendant of one of the most politically connected networks in state history.
And this is where the story starts folding back in on itself.
Now remember that Edward Mayes and his wife Fannie Lamar Mayes had a son: Lucius Lamar “LL” Mayes.
So, the same Chancellor Edward Mayes already sitting on Sallie’s side of the family tree would eventually become her father-in-law.
LL carried an equally impressive pedigree into the marriage. Born in Oxford and raised in one of Mississippi’s most influential intellectual and political families, he earned a law degree from Ole Miss but ultimately made his mark in real estate development during Jackson’s great early twentieth-century expansion.
Original image source unknown; based on a historic photograph of homes associated with the Sylvandell/early Belhaven-era development in Jackson, Mississippi. This reconstructed image was digitally enhanced and AI-generated from the original historic image for illustrative and educational purposes, 2026.
In time, LL became deeply associated with the development of modern Belhaven in Jackson and the romantic residential enclave known as Sylvandell. Jackson’s Mayes Street and Mayes Lake would eventually bear the family name, though historians still debate whether the lake was named for LL himself or for his father instead.
LL and Our Sallie married at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in 1912 in one of Jackson’s great society weddings. Newspapers described it as one of the largest and most fashionable ceremonies the capital city had seen in years. The guest list alone read like a social register of old Jackson.
Today, much of this remarkable family network rests inside Greenwood Cemetery. Walking its grounds means walking among generations of Mississippi political history — governors’ descendants, congressmen’s families, university leaders, lawyers, and developers whose lives shaped both Jackson and the state itself.
And stories like this are why old Mississippians always warned you “not to talk ugly about anybody” because you never know who they might be kin to.
