ARROWOOD FAMILYA wagon train composed of the Wilkey, Carson, Kirbey, Arrowood, and Rogers families, and probably other families left North Carolina in the spring of 1849 bound for California in the "Gold Rush." My great-great-grandfather, William D. Arrowood, his wife, Elizabeth Anderson (a full blood Cherokee Indian) was in this group. Their oldest son, my great-grandfather, Anderson D. Arrowood, and his wife, Dicey Carson, remained in Cherokee County, North Carolina near Shooting Creek. There were nine other children with them when they left, and a son was born in Union County, Georgia on the way west. When the wagon train reached Milam County, Texas, they stopped to let their oxen rest and to repair their wagons before continuing their trip west. William Arrowood opened a blacksmith shop and on July 19, 1854 was murdered by a drunken customer in an argument. This was at Donahue Creek in what is now Coryell County and left his wife with an infant daughter born there in June, 1854, as well as the other ten children. My great-grandfather, Anderson D. Arrowood, came from North Carolina and settled on a farm just east of Gatesville in 1854 with his wife and three daughters. My grandfather, Samuel Houston Arrowood, was born there in 1855. Anderson D. Arrowood was killed in a fight in Gatesville in 1873, leaving his wife Dicey with eight children under the age of eighteeen, the youngest under two years old. Anderson D. was buried in the pasture near their home and was the first of thirteen family members to be buried there, with Dicey Carson Arrowood the last in 1908. This Cemetery has a fence around it and is listed in the Family Cemetery Record of Coryell County. Elizabeth Anderson Arrowood died on May 14, 1892 in the home of her daughter, Malinda Arrowood Honeycutt, and is buried in the original Gatesville Cemetery near the grave of her daughter, Nancy Arrowood Rogers. William and Elizabeth Arrowood's twelve children were: Anderson D., Melvina, Nancy, William Hillman (Colonel), twins Melinda and Wyley, George Washington, Lydia, Louisa, McDaniel, James and Elizabeth. Many of their children's descendants still live in the Gatesville area. Opal Anderson and Ima Fellars of Mound are grandchildren of Lydia, and Annelle Bruce is a greatgrandchild. Wilma Spence and Lloyd Ivy of Gatesville are grandchildren of George W., and the Honeycutts are descendants of Melinda. Anderson D. and Dicey Arrowood's children were: Louise, who married J.M. Black; Elizabeth, who married J.W. Carr; Sara Ann, who married Edwin J. Barr; Samuel Houston, who married Willie Ann Perry; Martha A., who married William Couch; Anderson Dee, who never married; William, who married Laura E. Blackstock; Josephine, who married Roach Powell; Albertine, who never married and died at age 26; twin boys who died as infants in 1869; and Jesse Wilborn, who never married and died at age 21. My grandfather, Sam H. Arrowood, and his wife, Willie, moved to Callahan County in 1890. He moved to Wilcox, Arizona in 1916 and was killed by a local man in 1918. Dee Arrowood of Fort Worth and Alice Poe of Lometa are children of William Arrowood. The last owner of the Arrowood farm east of Gatesville, after the death of Dicey Arrowood, was her bachelor son, Dee, who died in the 1930's. The land passed from Arrowood ownership after that. There are a few Arrowood descendants in the Cross Plains, Abilene, and Bangs areas. My mother, Nora Arrowood Jones, was a daughter of Sam H. Arrowood. There is only one of Sam H. and Willie Arrowood's children still living. She is the youngest daughter, Mrs. Billie Moon, of San Rafael, California. -- Dale Jones
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