Brick Wall Broken- Shared DNA Success Story!!! -Part 1

Note: This is the First Part of a Two Part Post. Following is a link to Part 2:

http://micsxchromosome.micbarnette.com/brick-wall-broken-by-shared-dna-part-2/
(Note: Hopefully, you have read my 4 Part blog called Shared Chromosomes. If not, I suggest doing so after reading this success story. It will guide you through the methodology behind how this brick wall was conquered.  Here is a link to the First Part

http://micsxchromosome.micbarnette.com/shared-chromosomes-and-triangulation-part-1/

Well, it appears like DNA and Traditional Research combined may have just shattered a brick wall much older than me. Apparently, traditional research could not solve the problem and DNA research alone, also, could not solve the problem. But, traditional research and DNA research combined may well have done the trick!

 
While I feel like the case is solved earlier generations need to be researched. Also, this brick wall has been around so long I want to be sure it has “really” been obliterated and I am not trying to make myself believe it is gone until I am totally sure it has been solved. Anyway, here is the story and background…..

 
Back in the 1960’s when I was very young and green in genealogy the few books and articles there were said one should contact older relatives as a starting point. So, that is what I did.
I visited one of my deceased grandmother’s sisters and she suggested I visit with her first cousin, Lucille Arnold Hobbs (1902-1983) of Atlanta, Georgia. (My grandmother was Hilda Finch Barnette (1891-1959) and the then living sister was Grace Maver Finch Shackelford (1897-1980).

 
Cousin Lucille as it turned out was a first cousin of both my Grandmother and my Grandfather (Hugh Gilbert Marshall Barnette 1891-1961). Lucille’s father was Willis Roberson Arnold an uncle of my grandfather, a brother of my Grandfather’s mother, Sarah Permelia Arnold 1865-1931). Lucille’s mother was Annie Gaines, an aunt of the Finch sisters. Hilda and Grace’s mother was Viola Howell Gaines.

 
Cousin Lucille had the Arnold-Brawner Bible which contained a marriage record for James J. Arnold and Sarah Aminda Brawner -11 September 1862, it said. Lucille recanted the story of how James J and Sarah Aminda met.

 
According to her story James was guarding a bridge at Spring Place when they met. After serving his year enlistment in the military he returned to Spring Place and married her.
Spring Place is a town in Murray County located in Northwest Georgia about 32 miles from Chattanooga, Tennessee. As I tried to verify the story many years ago I checked the marriage records of Murray County. The marriage was not in the index on the microfilm. In fact, as I studied the index, there were no surnames beginning with “A”.

 
I remember writing the local historical library asking them to check the marriage book using the date. They informed me the first page of the marriage book which held the “A” surnames had stuck to the second page due to the book being laminated. The letter “A” index page had inadvertently been missed during the microfilming but the actual marriage was physically in the book and on the microfilm.

 
I then did some research to see if I could verify James J Arnold had been in the area of Spring Place to have been guarding a bridge there. The military record Cousin Lucille had for “a” James J Arnold, if we had the right James J Arnold, indicated he had served in Company G 4th Alabama Infantry.

 
The James J Arnold of the record, aged 22 had enlisted at Marion, Perry County, Alabama on April 24, 1861in the “Marion Light Infantry” which became Company G of the 4th Alabama Infantry.

 
In checking the records of the companies of the 4th Alabama I found the companies were formed in various parts of Alabama and all rendezvoused at Dalton, Georgia where the 4th was actually organized and the location from which they were collectively transported to Virginia to participate in the anticipated actions of the Civil War.

 
It can be conceived, then, that Company G left Marion April 24 or April 25or thereabouts after all the men had enlisted and rendezvoused shortly thereafter in the Dalton area where they boarded a train which arrived on May 7 in Harper’s Ferry (West) Virginia.

 
It was in Harper’s Ferry where the 4th Alabama Regiment was mustered into the Army of Virginia under General Robert E Lee. If Company G arrived in the Dalton area before the day of departure it would be easy to assume soldiers would be sent out to do guarding as a part of their normal military duties.

 
The distance today between Dalton and Spring Place via highway 52 is about 10 miles. We have no idea where Aminda Brawner’s family lived, near Spring Place, at the time James and she met but the family story has credibility based on the short distance between Spring Place and Dalton.

 
Here is a link to an interesting story about Company G’s company Flag http://www.archives.state.al.us/referenc/Flags/018019.html

 
Private James J. Arnold served his year in the service and was discharged in Virginia due to disability on March 14, 1862. Nothing in his record indicated what his disability was but the company record indicates the men suffered severe depravities and illness as a result of exposure to the Virginia winter weather where they often camped out with no tents or other shelter.

 
It may be surmised James returned to Alabama-Georgia shortly after being discharged. Maybe he went first to Spring Place or maybe he went first to visit his family in Perry County, Alabama. In any case, he was back in Spring Place on September 1862 when he married Aminda Clemintine Brawner.

 
There were four children born to this couple:
Emma Elizabeth, Sarah Permelia, Willis Roberson and Annie C
Emma Elizabeth was born in June 1863 and died in August 1863 in rural Atlanta or more likely rural Fulton County, near Atlanta. The area they lived is currently in the City of Atlanta but without looking at a contemporary 1863 map, I would venture the area was not actually in what was then the city of Atlanta.

 
The second child, Sarah Permelia, my ancestor, was born May 9, 1865 in Summerside, Prince Edward Island in the Maritimes of Canada. May 9 was exactly one month after General Robert E. Lee surrendered his army at Appomattox.

 
Over the years I have conducted cursory research wherever I could to try to verify the presence of the family in PEI, mainly writing queries in the US and Canada, and contacting the PEI Archives. I have always had tentative plans for a genealogical research trip to the Island but never put that plan into action. Maybe, now, with the placing of Canadian records online the family may be located there.

 
In any case, the family was back in Atlanta by December 1866 when Willis Roberson Arnold the third child was born. Then, there was a fourth child, Annie C, born in 1869.
In the 1870 Census, Aminda and her three surviving children are enumerated in Atlanta, but not James J. This is where the brick wall began.

 
Family tradition came down to me from Cousin Lucille that James had gone back to Canada and was going to send for the family and they never heard from him again. Cousin Lucille, did however, say at one point that someone had sent the family a newspaper article that James had been killed in a mining accident or train accident, she was not sure which.
I mined newspapers and the Internet about mining and train accidents in the 1870 era attempting to verify James’ death and the circumstances of his death. Nothing ever turned up and I was at a lull in my brick wall search.

 
Over the years I wrote the Archives in Prince Edward Island and studied histories of the Island. I was told there were no trains on the Island at the time I was searching and there has never been any mining on the Island at any time. I did discover there has been mining on Nova Scotia which is not far away. Maybe James mined in Nova Scotia and the family lived in Summerside?

 
I also studied Confederate activity in Prince Edward Island. James had been a private in the military and a farmer in civilian life. He was literate but I found nothing that would make me think he would have been involved in any Confederate activity in the area.

 
I even checked passports-United States as well as Confederate and found nothing.