Are these men the same person?

[Insaniac]

Or, he might have enlisted using his most recent master's name (Barnett), and later adopted Etheridge after some helpful/influential person whom he admired. Was there, by any chance, an officer named Etheridge in the 22nd USCI? (that's too much to hope for, too easy) Possibly someone who befriended him.

I just checked, and there was indeed another soldier with the name! Isaac Etherage was also a private in the 2nd USCT, although he was in a different company than Enoch.

 

[John Hartwell]

I just checked, and there was indeed another soldier with the name! Isaac Etherage was also a private in the 2nd USCT, although he was in a different company than Enoch.

Might have been best friends -- during and/or after the war. Did they by any chance live in the same place postwar?

Have you checked the 1860 slave census for owners named Barnett, with a slave named Enoch of about the right age? Might provide a lead. Check for Etheridge, too.

 

[Insaniac]

Might have been best friends -- during and/or after the war. Did they by any chance live in the same place postwar?

Actually, yes. According to his enlistment papers, Isaac Etherage was also born in Currituck, North Carolina. He also was living in Norfolk by 1910 and died there in 1923. We might be on to something here.

Edit: And I'll try finding a slave record. Thanks!

 

[John Hartwell]

Actually, yes. According to his enlistment papers, Isaac Etherage was also born in Currituck, North Carolina. He also was living in Norfolk by 1910 and died there in 1923. We might be on to something here.

Edit: And I'll try finding a slave record. Thanks!

Could they have been brothers? Check 1850 slave schedules, too.

 

[Insaniac]

Could they have been brothers? Check 1850 slave schedules, too.

Don't think they were brothers. The names of their parents on their respective death certificates differ. The slave schedules don't include the names of the slaves, only those of their owners, but I could find some teenage slaves in 1860 belonging to various Barnett families in Virginia. Also found some seven- and six-year-olds in 1860.

 

[John Hartwell]

I note that in the 1850 schedules for Currituck County, there were a total of 108 slaves owned by about a dozen different men named Ethelridge. Common name there/then. I've never worked with slave schedules before, and the only one I ever happened to see did list the slaves' first names -- guess that was an exception.

By any chance, do the fathers' names on the death certs. match the names of owners from the censuses? That's a real long-shot, but keep it in mind.

 

[Insaniac]

I note that in the 1850 schedules for Currituck County, there were a total of 108 slaves owned by about a dozen different men named Ethelridge. Common name there/then. I've never worked with slave schedules before, and the only one I ever happened to see did list the slaves' first names -- guess that was an exception.

By any chance, do the fathers' names on the death certs. match the names of owners from the censuses? That's a real long-shot, but keep it in mind.

Negative. Interestingly enough, however, a search of Barnett slaves in Currituck County (specifically as well as in adjacent counties) in both 1850 and 1860 yields absolutely no results.

Thanks for all your help, by the way!

 

[Insaniac]

Update: Found something very interesting. I checked the previous page on the 1890 census that Enoch E. appeared in and found an Enoch "Bennum", originally of North Carolina, who was in the same regiment (2nd USCT Inf.) and company (C) that Enoch Barnett was in. He even had the same rank Enoch Barnett had when he was mustered out; that of a private. However, the enlistment dates are different. Even so, I thought for sure I'd found our man, since the surnames were so much more similar than Etheridge is to Barnett and this man, too, lived in Norfolk after the war in the same neighborhood as Enoch E. I decided to poke around on the Web some more just to make sure, though.

Turns out that the Enoch Bennum who whose rank and dates of service are listed in 1890 is almost certainly Enoch Barnham, a farmer from Camden, North Carolina who was given the rank of corporal upon his enlistment in 1863 but got himself demoted to private a year later. Turns out he enlisted at Camp Casey just four days before Enoch Barnett did the same! I found him in censuses 1870-1900. He married a woman named Emma, was later widowed, and applied for pension in 1891. This is clearly not the same person as Enoch Barnett, who according to his service record remained a private his entire career and who definitely had a wife named Josephine at some point. So, yeah, it didn't take too long to put the kibosh on the Enoch Bennam=Enoch Barnett theory.

However, I did notice that numerous men on the veterans' census on which Enoch Etheridge and Enoch Barnett appear on also have their aliases listed. There are at least four or five veterans who have the name they enlisted under next to or beneath the handle they went by in 1890. So, perhaps Enoch Etheridge's line is simply unfinished, and Enoch Barnett would have been written as his alias had it been completed?