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There
are some real, documented Cherokee Arrowood's, though not of the
generation to which most descendants attribute their presumed ancestry
In
1870 in Cherokee County, NC, James A. Arrowood married Cornelia Cherokee
Powell. Cornelia and her five Arrowood children appear on a list of North
Carolina Cherokees who removed to the Cherokee Nation 22 October 1881
James is listed on a related document as one who settled on the Indian
Nation land by right of wife.
Indicative
of the frustration confronting Cherokee searchers, in the 1880 census of
Cherokee County, all members of James's family are listed as white.
However, the four year old son, Fred, was enumerated a second time in the
home of his maternal grandmother, where everyone in the household,
including Fred, was listed as Indian race.
 Cherokee
Arrowoods
Ralph
Clark said: It seems that nearly every Arrowood descendant has some family
tradition of descent from a Cherokee ancestor. Alas, however, an actual
documented Cherokee Arrowood, or spouse of an Arrowood, seems as elusive
as Bigfoot. I've undertaken here to list some facts, traditions, stories,
and rumors about the subject.
Apart
from Cherokee Arrowoods, there is a tradition of a couple of Anderson
spouses who were said to be "full Cherokee." I've included them
in the discussion where information has been discovered.
Tradition
Stories
and rumors of Cherokee ancestry abound.
Elizabeth Anderson who married William Arrowood whose family settled in
Coryell County, Texas, was said to be "full Cherokee."
The mother of Nathan Lewis Arrowood is said to be Cherokee.
The wife of Benjamin Arrowood was rumored to be Cherokee.
As a boy, the author heard that his great grandfather, Sterling Barrett.
was 1/8 Cherokee (making the author proud of every 64th drop of blood).
More
recently some family member claimed that Sterling's mother, Malinda
Arrowood, was very dark complextion, a full Cherokee. But this seems given
the lie by her father's army enlistment record, in which he's described as
blue-eyed. So the author favors the original version, which would mean
that the first wife of James Arrowood would have been half Cherokee. This
story is given credence by the 1817-19 tax lists of White County,
Tennessee, where some of the people among whom James was listed had
traditional Indian sounding names.
Documents
There
are various rolls and lists of members of the Cherokee tribe.
An
official US census of the Cherokee Nation conducted in 1835 in Alabama,
Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee showed nobody named Arrowood,
Anderson, or Powell.
by
Ralph Clark
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