Rhoda Unknown (Brockett) - The Paternity of Rhoda, the wife of Samuel Sloan Jr. of Jackson County Tennessee

DNA - The Brockett Factor - Beyond the Brick Wall

The identity of Samuel Sloan Jr's wife in Jackson County Tennessee has long been a controversial issue. The matter was complicated by difficult handwriting in the 1850 Census of Jackson County, Tennessee where the SLOAN surname was misread as SLEAR. Therefore Rhoda Slear appears on many Ancestry user pages. A closer examination of the Census points to some helpful solutions. An examination of nearby households reveals one son and one daughter of Samuel Sloan and Rhoda. These are John Sloan and his first wife (Martha Falkner who died before the 1860 Census). John remarried Mahulda Cassetty before 1860. Secondly, Elizabeth Sloan married Andrew Devenport, the son of another neighbor Henry Devenport and his wife Hannah Cassetty. Henry died before 1850 and left Hannah with a household of dependent children that moved into Samuel and Rhoda's home for support. DNA evidence is exceptionally strong among the descendants of the Sloan, Cassetty and Devenport families, fortified by several generations of intermarriage that began at the Revolutionary period in Virginia. Rhoda's name echoes many times in succeeding generations in the Sloan and Devenport family, showing memory of their ancestor Rhoda. But who was Rhoda, and from what family did she come? That question remained insoluble until a descendant of Marada Brockett Sloan (a daughter of Samuel and Rhoda) took a DNA test which showed affinity with all the other verifiable children of Samuel and Rhoda. A search on the Brockett family of Smith County revealed that Rhoda could be a forgotten daughter of the well documented Brockett family in Smith County Tennessee. To test the theory, search revealed only one male Brockett who could reasonably be Rhoda's father: Capt. William Ebenezer Brockett, who died in Carthage, Smith County in 1821. Armed with that information, on entering collateral lines into the system, the algorithm hit on Elisha Hardin Brockett, a brother about 6 years elder with an extraordinarily high degree match with Rhoda's descendants. Moreover, it hit with multiple matches for other known sons and daughters of William Ebenezer Brockett ( Benjamin, Sarah, Elisha and Thomas Ives Brockett). Further confirmation for the probability of Rhoda's lineage is found in the marriage of her brother Thomas Ives Brockett to Samuel Sloan Jr's sister Margaret Sloan. Thus, Rhoda and Thomas Ives Brockett both married Samuel and Margaret Sloan, children of Samuel Sloan Sr.., and Elizabeth Patterson. All these families had substantial documentary evidence as residents of Smith County, Tennessee at the time of their marriage alliances. Although a marriage record for Samuel Sloan and Rhoda Brockett has not been found, genetic evidence is strong enough to support the identification as reliable.