Around Bassett, Arlen Doss is a familiar face, always with a story to tell. Whether you run into him at the barber shop, Walmart, or Chick-fil-A, chances are you know him from his many years teaching at Bassett High School. But on June 13, 2026, the 87-year-old made a trip to the Old Crockett Cemetery in Wythe County, Virginia, to participate with the Sons of the American Revolution (SAR) in honoring his third great-grandfather, Revolutionary War soldier William Patterson Jr. It was a deeply personal moment, a descendant finally able to pay tribute to the man whose sacrifice helped build a nation. But it was a moment that almost never happened. Just a few years earlier, Arlen had no idea William Patterson Jr. even existed.
It took a DNA test to change that.
For years, Arlen wondered who his great-grandfather was on his mother’s side. His mother, Lucile Smith Doss, was from Wytheville, part of a Smith family rooted in that area. Lucile’s father, Henry Smith, was the son of Senia Smith, a woman who had taken her secrets quietly to the grave. Henry had never acknowledged a paternal line on any legal record, never spoke of it, and Lucile never knew. Even Arlen’s son Andy, an experienced genealogist and one of Virginia’s most successful SAR registrars, had hit a wall trying to trace that line. Arlen had made his peace with it. It was a question the family had just about given up on. Some mysteries, it seemed, were just going to stay that way.
Then came the DNA.
When Arlen submitted his DNA to Ancestry, the results were immediate and striking. A cluster of close Patterson matches came back — second and third cousins — far too close to ignore. The family had already known that Senia Smith had carried on an extramarital affair with a man named Charles G. Patterson — C.G. Patterson. A marriage certificate for Senia’s daughter Nannie Smith Stuart, born in 1881, had listed her father plainly as “C. G. Patterson,” making that relationship a matter of record. But Henry Smith was born thirteen years before Nannie, and nobody had ever thought to connect him to C.G. Patterson. The assumption had always been that Henry’s father was lost to history. But the DNA said otherwise. Arlen’s results were flooded with Patterson cousins — legitimate descendants of C.G. Patterson. It turned out Senia’s relationship with Patterson wasn’t a brief indiscretion; it was a quiet, decade-long connection that produced two children, rewriting a century of family assumptions.
With the Patterson connection confirmed, Andy began tracing that line back. As the paper trail unfolded, the line led them directly to the American Revolution. Robert Tilley of West Virginia, a descendant of C.G. Patterson, helped fill in more details. William Patterson Jr. was born in Virginia on or before 1760. He served in Captain Buchanan’s Company of the Montgomery County Militia and is recognized for additional Revolutionary War service. He settled in the Crockett Cove area of Wythe County after the war and died there on January 25, 1825. He is buried at the Old Crockett Cemetery in Wytheville.
A DNA test had connected a Bassett family to an 18th century soldier buried in Wythe County and opened a door that Arlen Doss would one day walk through.
Arlen had long been a member of the SAR, having joined through a patriot ancestor on his paternal side. Andy, who serves as president of the Colonel George Waller SAR Chapter, came across communications circulating among SAR and DAR groups about a planned grave marking ceremony for none other than William Patterson Jr. at the Old Crockett Cemetery. It was a full circle moment — the chapter would be represented, and so would the bloodline. As it happened, the ceremony fell on a weekend when Andy was going to be out of town. It took no convincing to talk Arlen into making the drive. He and his wife Emma headed out from Bassett and were joined there by his brother Gary.
The ceremony on June 13th was a joint SAR–DAR event, organized by the Stuart – Wilderness Road NSDAR Chapter and the Captain Ralph Stewart SAR Chapter, with representatives attending from chapters across Virginia and West Virginia. Arlen attended representing the Colonel George Waller SAR Chapter and as a direct descendant of the man being honored, with his brother Gary by his side.
For Arlen, standing at that cemetery on America’s 250th anniversary year, the years of questions and the DNA matches and the old court records all converged into a single quiet moment — a descendant finally able to honor the ancestor his family didn’t know they had.
