My Genealogy Hound

CAPT. JOSEPH S. ARNOLD, of the city of Jamestown, who commanded the First Battalion of New York Sharp-shooters in the Army of the Potomac, is a son of David and Rhoda (Rush) Arnold, and was born in the town of Ellery, Chautauqua county, New York, October 6, 1822. His paternal grandfather was a native of England and came to New England where he afterwards died. Of the sons born to him at Woonsocket, Rhode Island, one was David Arnold, the father of Joseph S. Arnold, and who removed to Saratoga Springs, New York, from which place he came in 1812 to Chautauqua county and settled near the line between the towns of Ellery and Ellicott. He afterwards removed to the lake shore, near Bemus Point, where he purchased four hundred acres of land from the Holland Land company. He was a farmer by occupation, and a whig and republican in politics. He died in 1862, aged eighty-three years. He married Dorcas Waters who died and left him six children. For his second wife he married Rhoda Rush, by whom he had four sons: David, Alexander, Lewis and Joseph, all of whom are dead but Joseph.

Joseph S. Arnold attended the Jamestown academy and Quaker seminary and then commenced farming in the town of Ellery where he remained until 1852 when he went by the “Overland Route” to California. The trip took one hundred days and after arriving at the gold mines he mined for a time, but soon went to Sacramento, where he was engaged in business until 1855. In that year he returned to this county and purchased his present farm of thirty-four acres in the town of Ellicott, where he has followed farming until the present time. On May 21, 1843, he married Mary, daughter of Arthur Phillips, a native of Connecticut and a shoemaker by trade, who came in 1825 to the town of Busti, but afterwards removed to the town of Ellicott where he died. Capt. and Mrs. Arnold had one child, George C., who enlisted as a private in the first Battalion of New York sharp-shooters in the autumn of 1862, and died of fever in the City Point hospital July 27, 1864.

Capt. Arnold is a democrat in politics. He entered the Union service in 1862 as captain of the 7th company of New York Sharp-shooters, took his company to Suffolk, Va., where they were joined by the 6th, 8th and 9th companies of New York Sharp-shooters, and the four companies united into the First Battalion New York Sharp-shooters. Capt. Arnold commanded this battalion until 1864. He was sun-struck on the Rappahannock river on August 1, 1863, and failing to recover entirely from its effects was by recommendation of the surgeon-in-chief of the Fifth Army Corps, discharged on April 21, 1864, on account of physical disability. He is a member of James M. Brown Post, No. 285, Grand Army of the Republic, at Jamestown.