Meghan Markle’s Local Relatives Here Only Briefly In Recent Decades

Many royal watchers are looking at this Saturday’s wedding between Prince Harry and actress Meghan Markle with much excitement and are anticipating their future together.

 

A few Chattanoogans, on the other hand, will also be looking at the royal highness’ past and her ancestral connections to the Scenic City.

 

As John Wilson broke locally in chattanoogan.com last November shortly before the engagement was announced, her grandfather, Alvin Ragland, was born in Chattanooga and spent his early years here.

Previous generations of the Ragland family had also lived here, he said.

 

And when the royal engagement became official later in November, Hamilton County Schools Superintendent Bryan Johnson pointed out that Ava Burrow Ragland -- Ms. Markle’s stepgrandmother – had worked as a schoolteacher here. She had taught at four different local elementary schools from the early 1990s to the early 2000s.

 

The British print media had also for some time been looking into Ms. Markle’s family tree.

 

A further look at the Chattanooga city directories of more recent years shows that the time when Ms. Ragland taught school, and was married to Alvin Ragland, was apparently the only time they lived in Chattanooga in recent years.

 

But they did reside at three different local addresses – a downtown apartment and two Brainerd homes – before they moved to California.

 

Ms. Markle – who since 2011 had played paralegal/part-time associate Rachel Zane on the USA Network’s “Suits” TV drama about a law firm – was born Rachel Meghan Markle in Los Angeles on Aug. 4, 1981, to Doria Ragland and Thomas Markle.

 

Her parents had met on the set of the soap opera, “General Hospital,” when Doria was a makeup artist in training and he was an Emmy Award-winning lighting director. 

 

Ms. Markle’s parents were divorced in 1988, although both were set to attend the royal wedding at St. George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle in South England this Saturday before he backed out following some backlash over staged paparazzi photos for which he was paid. Ms. Markle was also formerly married to Trevor Engelson from 2011-2013.

 

Ms. Markle’s mother, Doria, had been born to Alvin Azell Ragland and a nurse, Renee Arnold Johnson Ragland, in September 1956 in the Cleveland, Ohio, area, according to John B. Wells III, who wrote a long article on the Raglands for the genealogy website, www.eogn.com.

 

Doria also experienced the life of single parenthood, as her mother mostly raised her, although she did have some contact with former Chattanoogan Alvin Ragland, whose work included serving as a Baptist minister and dabbling in antiques, according to Mr. Wells.

 

Mr. Ragland reportedly left the family when Doria was young and served in the military. Later, in 1983, he married a younger Ava D. Burrow. They had one son together, Alvin Joffrey Ragland, who is Doria Ragland’s half brother.

 

Joffrey Ragland spent some of his growing-up years in Chattanooga and is now a freelance graphic designer in the Los Angeles area, according to online reports.

 

Both Doria Ragland and her stepmother, Ms. Burrow Ragland, who grew up in Los Angeles, are both now in their 60s, although Ms. Burrow Ragland is slightly older.

 

Regarding Alvin Ragland’s and wife Ava Burrow Ragland’s time in Chattanooga, they apparently only lived here during about the time she taught, according to the city directories.

 

In fact, Alvin Ragland’s name cannot be found in the city directories from the 1950s or later. However, her name is mentioned under Ava Burrow-Ragland for several years.

 

The directories do not seem to mention her occupation, only her residences. But Supt. Johnson said she taught kindergarten at Normal Park, Woodmore, Spring Creek and Red Bank elementaries from 1991-2002.

 

Efforts to contact her via the one or two possible phone numbers found online were unsuccessful, but it is known she lived at 409 Cameron Circle, Apartment 503, in the early-to-mid-1990s. This was, of course, the Cameron Hill Apartments that have since been torn down to make way for the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee complex.

 

In the mid-to-late 1990s, she lived at 328 Crestway Drive between North Germantown and Talley roads in Brainerd. Beginning in the early 2000s, she moved to 311 Crestway Drive. Both houses are pre-World War II homes that can be found in abundance in Brainerd not far from Missionary Ridge.

 

Since this time period in Chattanooga was before Alvin Ragland died on March 12, 2011, in Los Angeles at the age of 82, Doria Ragland could have possibly visited them some at one or more of those Chattanooga residences. And who knows, since Meghan Markle was a teenager then, she might have visited Chattanooga, too, if they were like most families regularly or periodically going to visit grandparents and other relatives.

 

Doria Ragland’s natural mother and Ms. Markle’s maternal grandmother died in December 2000 at the age of 71. 

 

As was documented in Mr. Wilson’s and Mr. Wells’ stories about the Raglands, Ms. Markle’s grandfather was the son of Steve Ragland, who had served as a presser at a dry cleaners. He had evidently left Alvin Ragland’s mother when Alvin was young.

 

Steven Ragland’s parents were Jeremiah and Claudia Ritchie Ragland. The native Georgian Jeremiah Ragland – Meghan Markle’s great-great-grandfather – operated his own tailor shop, while Claudia Ragland was a maid at Miller Bros. department store.

 

He died in 1944 and she in 1939, and they were buried in unmarked graves at the Greenhill Cemetery off Shepherd Road. It is an overgrown cemetery located on the left just beyond the Highland Memorial Gardens on the right and Shepherd Community Cemetery also on the left as one exits Highway 153.

 

It has a stone post marker along the road, but other than a few graves, it appears to provide little additional information of note, including about this couple who tried to make a living in this city that still had limited opportunities for black people.

 

But now their descendant – Ms. Markle – is getting to add a very unusual chapter to this ‘Raglands’ to riches story with her marriage to Prince Harry.

 

Jcshearer2@comcast.net