William Washington Arnett was born on January 5, 1823 in Franklin County, Alabama, the son of David and Rhoda Curlee Arnett. The family moved to Mississippi in 1828. In 1837 Arnett's mother died, and he contracted "inflammatory rheumatism" from which he never fully recovered. Arnett lived with a brother in Tennessee for a time and then returned to Mississippi, where he became tax assessor of Leake County in 1843. After receiving a rejection to a marriage proposal in 1845, he went to live with family in Texas.

In Texas, Arnett taught school and resided with his older brother in the Tyler County communities of Town Bluff and Wolf Creek. There he married Emiline Varnell and had seven children. During the Mexican War Arnett served as a private in Capt. John A. Veatch's company of Col. Peter H. Bell's regiment of Texas Mounted Volunteers. After his wife's death in 1871, Arnett remarried in 1874 to Mary Eudocia Herrington, and had five children. Eventually settling in Brackettville, he was elected treasurer of Kinney County in 1876, and was still holding the office at the time of his death sixteen years later, on December 23, 1892.

("ARNETT, WILLIAM WASHINGTON." The Handbook of Texas Online. http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/view/AA/far13.html [Accessed Fri Nov 14 9:54:31 US/Central 2003].)