This tag was created by Hai In Jo. 

Enrolling as Cherokee Freedmen: Social Networks of Rejected Applicants

Jenny (Jennie) Barnes

Jenny Barnes, the youngest of the Albert family, was born in the Goingsnake district of the Cherokee Nation. She was enslaved to Johnson Whitmire, along with her mother, Nancy, and sister, Martha Albert​​​ (Freedmen applicant). According to Martha, she moved south with the whole family and later returned to the Cherokee Nation in fall 1866. However, this return was contested in Robert Barnes’s application. 

Jenny lived with her family at the Starr home and then married Jerry Whitmire about six months after returning under the Cherokee law, visiting Caleb Starr’s place about two to three months after marriage. She gave birth to her daughter, Lula, in the Cherokee Nation. For four to five years after marriage, she worked in the field with the Albert family while her husband was hired out to the other side of Fort Smith, near Huntington, in a coal bank called Jenny Lynn, for about a year. Like her husband, Jenny was also hired out in Fort Smith. Afterwards, they both moved to Lee’s Creek, where they began farming. 

Jenny married Sam B. Barnes after Jerry Whitmire died. With Sam, she had a son named Robert Barnes, and later, another daughter named Maggie. 

Commissioner Breckinridge noted that Jenny Barnes was not identified on the roll of 1880 as a Cherokee Freedman. 

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