Or, Subtitled: I “Am Indebted to Oakville Whiskey and ‘Wes’ Lindsey,” and Murder of a Brother-in-Law of a “Bullying Nature”
Now to move on to another of the children of Mark Lindsey and Mary Jane Dinsmore, their fourth child, Fielding Wesley Lindsey. His tombstone in the Lindsey cemetery near Speake in Lawrence County, Alabama, states that he was born 11 December 1813 and died 21 March 1868.[1] Speake, which is named after James Beckham Speake, who married Sarah Brooks Lindsey, daughter of Wesley Lindsey’s brother Dennis and wife Jane Brooks, is 2.7 miles south of Oakville, where Dennis lived and where Mark and Mary Jane Lindsey are buried in a family cemetery along with Dennis and Jane Lindsey.
Both the 1850 and 1860 federal census (see below on these documents) place Wesley Lindsey’s birth in Kentucky; we know from numerous records that his parents were living in Wayne County, Kentucky, in 1813, so I think we can conclude fairly surely that he was born in that place. He died in Lawrence County, Alabama.
An Eyewitness Account of Wesley Lindsey (April 1909)
As with his father Mark and his brother William Burke Lindsey, we’re fortunate to have an eyewitness account of Wesley Lindsey. This account was published by S.W. Barbee in the Moulton Advertiser in April 1909 as part of his series “Old Lawrence Reminiscent.”[2] We’ve met Barbee with another installment of the series previously as we discussed John Kitchens, whose family was intermarried with the Lindsey family.
Here’s what Barbee has to say about Wesley Lindsey:
Fielding W. Lindsey, better known as “Wes” Lindsey, was one of the old time merchants of Oakville. Without experience, he moved right from the farm to the store, and was handicapped from the very beginning. His career as a merchant lasted only about a year, after which he retired to a small farm in the south eastern part of the county, and there passed the remainder of his days.
I think he purchased only one stock of goods, and this at Charleston. That was the day of credit. There was not an operating railroad in Lawrence county at the time, and but few any where in the South, so the goods were brought up the Tennessee river to Florence, and hauled in wagons to Oakville.
Naturally generous, and taking no note of the debit side of his ledger, Mr. Lindsey soon found himself without either merchandise or credit. And what hastened the business disaster that so overtook him, he had learned to “tarry long at the wine,” and he was ever after that the patron of the cup. He was a brother to David Lindsey, whose career I have sketched in a former letter, and who consumed almost his entire fortune of several thousand dollars in drink.
Mr. Lindsey was a handsome man. He was a little less than 6 feet, and weight 190 pounds. He was of florid complexion, had wavy black hair, and was clean shaven. He was open-hearted and of an open countenance. He had nothing to conceal, and nothing to withhold from his friends and neighbors — and they were legion. Everybody liked “Wes Lindsey.”
I was always a prohibitionist, but am indebted to Oakville whiskey and “Wes” Lindsey for the first “store” coat I ever had. It was on this wise: Mr. Lindsey, returning home one night from the great sale of John Orr, deceased — the sale continued for several days — lost his gold watch near my father’s, and calling at the home acquainted my parents with the fact, and said he would reward the finder.
Of course I was the “early bird” next morning, and I soon had the “worm.” When Mr. Lindsey passed the following day going to the sale, he was given the watch. He placed a bright dollar in my hand. I hastened away to Steve Simpson’s store, at what is now Danville, but Simpson’s was the only store there, and bought ½ yards of cloth, and my mother made the coat. So Lindsey, Livingston and Simpson will forever be associated together in my mind, with “store” goods.
There’s much of interest in this brief biography. Not only does it tell us that, like his brothers Burke and Dinsmore, Wes Lindsey was called by his middle name, but it also gives us a physical description of this son of Mark and Mary Jane Lindsey. In addition, it indicates that, like his brother Burke and his nephew John Wesley Lindsey, son of Dennis and Jane Lindsey, Fielding Wesley Lindsey tried his hand at merchandising, although it appears not very successfully.
Finally, there’s this, something inescapable in the several eyewitness accounts we have of Mark Lindsey and three of his sons — Burke, Wesley, and Dinsmore — which one cannot avoid commenting on, as we place those eyewitness accounts side by side: as we’ve seen, when A.G. Copeland published a reminiscence of Mark Lindsey in October 1889 in the Hartselle newspaper Alabama Enquirer, he stated, “Mark was a Methodist, but loved a dram.”[3] And when Reverend Samuel Agnew spent the night at the house of Burke Lindsey and wife Carolina Puckett Lindsey in Tishomingo County, Mississippi, on 3 August 1854, he wrote in his diary that Burke “seem[ed] to have indulged in strong drink, and we could smell it very perceptibly.”[4]
We also saw, as we discussed what Reverend Agnew wrote about Burke and Carolina after he and another guest had enjoyed their hospitality while traveling in northeastern Mississippi in August 1854, that he recorded in his diary (rather ungraciously, considering how his hosts treated him) gossip that was actually scurrilous — in particular, he stated that the couple were not married, when documents prove otherwise. But given the fact that we have eyewitness accounts of a fondness for drink in the case of Mark and two other sons, Wesley and Dinsmore, it certainly seems plausible that Agnew was reporting correctly when he states that he found Burke Lindsey having enjoyed a tipple before his guests arrived unexpectedly.
Perhaps if Mark’s other son, Dennis, had not died at the young age of 41 and had lived to be remembered in some way by local commentators, we’d have met some similar accounts about him — especially since James Edmond Saunders remembered Dennis as “a second edition of his father, in person and character.”[5]
It should be noted, by the way, that not only Barbee, but also A.G. Copeland in his October 1889 reminiscence of Mark Lindsey and John Knox in his history of Morgan County, Alabama, tell us that Fielding was Fielding Wesley Lindsey, and went by his middle name.[6] (Knox erroneously refers to him as John Wesley Lindsey.)
Other Records of Fielding Wesley Lindsey and His Family
As I noted about his brother Burke when I discussed that son of Mark Lindsey, it’s likely I have incomplete documentation of the life of Fielding Wesley Lindsey. I think there are more records to be found regarding him and his life in Lawrence and Morgan County, Alabama, than the ones to which I’ll point here, and, as I did with Burke Lindsey, I’ll refer you to the Lawrence County Archives and their very helpful website for further information.
The first record I have of Wesley in Lawrence County is the bond he gave on 20 June 1835 with James Irwin Brooks for his marriage to James’s sister Clarissa, whose name appears on the marriage bond as Clarissa E.B. Brooks. James and Clarissa were children of James Brooks and Nancy Isbell of Lawrence County.[7] The elder James was a brother to Thomas Brooks (married Sarah Whitlock), whose daughters Jane and Sarah married Wesley’s brothers Dennis and Dinsmore Lindsey — and, as we have seen, their brother Burke was a business partner of Jane and Sarah’s brother Alexander Mackey Brooks prior to Alexander’s move from Lawrence County to Texas in the latter part of the 1830s, after which Burke married Alexander’s former wife Carolina Puckett Brooks.
The marriage bond shows that, after Wesley Lindsey and James Brooks gave bond on the 20th, Wesley and Clarissa were married on 24 June 1835 by a minister of the gospel, Edmond Pearson. Pearson (1795-1848) was a Methodist circuit rider who was serving the Tennessee Conference when this marriage took place, and who subsequently settled in Talladega County, Alabama, where he died in 1848.[8]
On 4 May 1838, Alexander M. Brooks & Co. made a mortgage to Fielding Wesley Lindsey with James Hogan Jr. as trustee, for a debt of $1,700 to Fielding W. Lindsey who had allowed his name to be used for that sum with the Decatur Bank (Morgan County, Alabama, Deed Bk. B, pp. 44-5). The instrument states that the firm of A.M. Brooks & Co. had consisted of A.M. Brooks and W.B. Lindsey, “late merchants and partners trading under the name firm and style of A.M. Brooks & Co.” F.W. Lindsey, James Hogan Jr., and A.M. Brooks & Co. all signed. The mortgage was recorded 19 May 1838. William Burke Lindsey was Wesley Lindsey’s brother.
For information about an 18 March 1839 deed of trust that Wesley Lindsey’s sister-in-law Jane Brooks Lindsey made to the administrators of Dennis Lindsey’s estate, James B. Speake and Samuel Irwin, with Wesley Lindsey as trustee, see this posting.
As we found in a previous posting, on 13 September 1839, Wesley Lindsey mortgaged property to his father Mark in Lawrence County with his brother brother Dinsmore as security. The mortgage suggests that Wesley was indebted to his father, and that this case was perhaps the outcome of a case of debt documented in Lawrence County’s loose court papers. The case concerned a promissory note of John Keys dated 1 June 1838 in the sum of $203.63 to James N. Leeper. Leeper assigned the note to Lindsey and Gibson who were suing through their attorney.[9] This case also seems to me to illustrate how the finances of Mark and his two youngest sons Wesley and Dinsmore became intertwined in the final years of Mark’s life, a development that, I’m inclined to think, led to the lawsuit that Mark’s daughter Nancy and husband William Morris filed after Mark’s death, alleging that Wesley and Dinsmore were benefiting from the estate settlement at the expense of other heirs.
Wesley Lindsey is enumerated (with his name given as Wesley and not Fielding) on the 1840 federal census in Lawrence County, Alabama, with a household comprised of a male 20-30, a male 15-20, and 2 males under five, along with a female 20-30.[10] The household also contains one enslaved person. The tallies on this page of the Lawrence County census also show a number of free people of color living in each household on the page; five free people of color are enumerated in Wesley Lindsey’s household. I suspect there is some error in these census entries, since I have found no evidence suggesting that a large number of white households in Lawrence County in 1840 included free persons of color.
The older male and female in this household in 1840 are Wesley and wife Clarissa, and the two males under five are their two first children, James Dennis and William Thomas Lindsey, who were born in 1838 and 1839. I think it’s likely the male aged 15-20 is a nephew of Wesley, one of two sons of Dennis Lindsey and Jane Brooks who were born between 1820-1825 — Thomas Madison (born in 1821) and Charles Washington Lindsey (born 1822-4). The listing for the 1840 federal census for Dennis’s widow Jane in Lawrence County suggests that both of her sons aged 15-20 in 1840, neither of whom had yet married, were not living in her household in 1840.[11] I suspect that those two sons were living with close relatives and assisting with work on the farms of those relatives in 1840, and that either Thomas or Charles was living with his uncle Wesley.
On 13 May 1846, Fielding W. Lindsey was commissioned a second lieutenant for Lawrence County’s 10th militia division, 4th brigade, 8th regiment.[12] This military appointment came to Wesley Lindsey soon after the Mexican-American War broke out, though I have not found any indication that he himself was involved in that conflict. Two of his nephews, sons of Dennis Lindsey and Jane Brooks, enlisted for service during this war — Charles Washington and Samuel Asbury Lindsey — and a letter Samuel wrote to their sister Martha from Natural Bridge, Mexico, on 24 October 1847 speaks of Charles’s death in Mexico at some point prior to that date.[13]
On 17 July 1846, Wesley Lindsey gave bond in Lawrence County with Thomas R. Brooks and B.W. Isbell for the administration of the estate of Samuel F. Brooks, a brother of Wesley’s wife Clarissa.[14] Thomas R. Brooks was another of Clarissa’s brothers, and Barnaby Wallace Isbell was a first cousin of Clarissa, Thomas, and Samuel F. Brooks, a son of James Milton Isbell and Sarah Jane Wallace.
The loose-papers probate file for Samuel’s estate settlement shows Fielding W. Lindsey filing an account of an estate sale in Lawrence County on 21 September 1846.[15] I think it’s likely that Samuel F. Brooks is the Sam Brooks spoken of by S.W. Barbee in one of the “Old Lawrence Reminscent” articles he published in the Moulton Advertiser in October 1908, as he recounts the murder of Sam Brooks by Nick Eddy.[16]
Barbee notes that Oakville in Lawrence County used to be “famed for its annual battalions and regimental drills,” which were held in summer after crops had been laid by. At one of these events — Barbee gives no date — Sam Brooks, “a man of rather haughty spirit and domineering disposition,” who commanded a militia in Lawrence County along with Nick Eddy, plotted to insult Eddy publicly in front of their comrades. Eddy was, Barbee notes, “of humble and rather obscure origin,” and Brooks had a “bullying nature” and wanted to humiliate Eddy.
On the morning on which he had plotted to insult Eddy, Brooks arrived at the Oakville militia showing about 11 A.M., accompanied by his friends, and spat in Eddy’s face. Eddy then drew a pocket knife and slashed Brooks’s throat, killing him instantly. Brooks was born 5 August 1821, and if this killing occurred in July 1846, as it appears to me it did, he would have been just short of 25 when he died.
As we’ve seen in a previous posting, when Wesley Lindsey’s father Mark died in Morgan County on 10 April 1848, Wesley administered his father’s estate, filing for administration and giving bond with his brother Dinsmore on 8 May 1848.[17] On 6 June 1850, he appealed for final settlement of the estate, and on 10 June 1850, orphan court minutes state that, on order from the Chancellor of the 33 District of the Northern Division of Alabama, the estate settlement had been transferred to chancery court.[18] Chancery court minutes then track a dispute about the estate settlement after Wesley’s sister Nancy and husband William Morris filed suit in chancery court on 22 April 1850, but the minutes end without providing any information about the disposition of the estate or how the lawsuit was settled.[19]
On 18 June 1849 in Morgan County, Dinsmore’s mother Mary Dinsmore Lindsey sold to sons Dinsmore and Wesley an enslaved woman named Edy who is described in the deed of sale as fifteen years of age and of a yellow complexion (Morgan County, Alabama, Deed Bk. F, pp. 346-7). The deed notes that Mary was the widow of Mark Lindsey and states that Dinsmore and Wesley paid their mother $510. Mary signed the deed by mark with Robert Johnson witnessing. Edy had been mentioned in a list of enslaved people mortgaged by Mark Lindsey in the June 1841 mortgage he made to Benjamin Cooper and Mark’s son Dinsmore, which is discussed above. That document gives her age as 9 in 1841, and also states that she was of a yellow complexion. This deed is also recorded in Lawrence County with a 9 June 1849 date (Lawrence County, Alabama, Deed Bk. M, pp. 452-3).
On 17 May 1850, Wesley Lindsey gave bond for constable duty in Gibson’s beat in Lawrence County. His securities in the bond were his cousin Thomas R. Brooks and William McNutt.[20]
Later in 1850, Wesley Lindsey is enumerated (as F.W. Lindsey) on the federal census in Lawrence County.[21] He is listed as a merchant, aged 36, born in Kentucky. Wife Clarissa is 30, born in Alabama. In the household are children James, 11, William, 9, George, 7, Mary, 5, Samuel, 3, and an Anderson Ogles, 21, all born in Alabama. Wesley’s brother Dinsmore (listed as D.D. Lindsey) is on the preceding page, 6 houses away, and his sister-in-law Jane Brooks Lindsey is on the following page. F.W. Lindsey also appears on the 1850 agricultural census in the same district of Lawrence County, with 30 improved acres.[22]
The 1850 federal slave census for Lawrence County shows F.W. Lindsey in district 8 owning three enslaved persons, a mulatto female 22, a female 3 (or 5), and a male 1, both listed as black (see NARA, Seventh Census Of The United States, 1850; microfilm M432, RG 29). His brother David Dinsmore Lindsey is listed on the same page of the slave census holding five enslaved persons.
On 25 March 1853, after his mother Mary Jane Dinsmore Lindsey died on 10 March, Wesley Lindsey applied for letters of administration on her estate, giving bond in the amount of $400 with brother Dinsmore and with John Irwin.[23] At the sale of Mary Jane’s estate on 29 April, he bought a number of items including coverlets, counterpanes, a quilt, bedclothes, and a dress and cape.[24]
The final document I have for Wesley Lindsey is his listing on the 1860 federal census in Lawrence County (F.W. Lindsey). He’s enumerated in the county’s southern district at Moulton post office. Wesley is 46, a farmer, born in Kentucky. His wife C.B. is 40, born in Alabama. In the household are children James, 21, W.T., 18, George, 17, Mary, 15, and Mark, 13, all born in Alabama.[25] F.W. Lindsey also appears on the 1860 agricultural census in Lawrence County at the Moulton post office in the southern district of the county, with 50 acres of improved land and 250 acres unimproved.[26]
As noted previously, Fielding Wesley Lindsey and wife Clarissa Brooks Lindsey are buried in the Lindsey cemetery near Speake in Lawrence County. The dates of birth and death of both are given on their tombstones. Wesley’s stone is also inscribed, “Though lost to sight / To memory dear.”
Clarissa Brooks Lindsey and the Children of Wesley and Clarissa Lindsey
Clarissa’s tombstone in Lindsey cemetery near Speake, Alabama, states that she was born 28 August 1818 and died 1 October 1896.[27] The register of the bible of her father James Brooks gives her date of birth as 25 August 1818.[28] Clarissa’s tombstone also has an inscription reading, “Sleep on, mother, thy work is done / Jesus has come and borne thee home,” along with an inscription stating that the stone was carved by C.J. Moore of Hartselle, Alabama.
Clarissa’s obituary in the Moulton Advertiser on 15 October 1896 also gives her date of birth, stating, “Died at home of her son Mr. Samuel Lindsey, near Oakville, on the 1st inst., Mrs. Clarissa Lindsey, in her 77th year.”[29] Samuel is Clarissa’s son Mark Samuel Lindsey, in whose household in Lawrence County she is listed as a widow on the 1870 and 1880 federal censuses.[30]
On two occasions in 1855, Frances Jarvis Torrence speaks of visits members of her family made to Wesley and Clarissa Lindsey. Frances was the daughter of Adam Torrence and Grizelle Caroline Matthews, who lived in Morgan County not far from Oakville in Lawrence County, where the Lindseys lived. Frances’s sister Margaret Jane married Thomas Madison Lindsey, son of Dennis Lindsey and Jane Brooks, on 26 December 1843 in Lawrence County.
On 2 July 1855, Frances writes that she, her mother, and her sister had gone to visit Mrs. Lindsey, who lived ¾ of a mile from her family. Her diary states, “We enjoyed ourselves very well as Mrs. Lindsey was looking for us. She is so lively. I really believe her to be one of the liveliest women I ever saw. She kept us laughing all day.” Later in the year on 17 October, Frances noted in her diary that on that day her mother had again been to visit Mrs. W. Lindsay.[31]
In his October 1889 remembrance of Mark Lindsey published in Hartselle’s Alabama Enquirer, A.G. Copeland article (17 Oct. 1889) says the following of Clarissa and her cousin Sarah Brooks, who married Wesley’s brother Dinsmore: “No better women live this side of Heaven. None ever sung and shouted more, none will have a better right to the tree of life than they.”
Since Clarissa Brooks appears in a number of documents with a middle initial E., I think it’s likely she was named Clarissa Elizabeth Brooks. Clarissa’s mother Nancy had a sister Elizabeth.
Fielding Wesley Lindsey and Clarissa Brooks had the following children:
- James Dennis Lindsey, born 17 January 1838 in Lawrence County, died 3 August 1883 at Danville in Morgan County. On 20 August 1872 in Lawrence County, he married Martha W., daughter of John Kitchens and Sarah L. Mowry. James is buried in the Lindsey cemetery near Speake; Martha is buried in the Kitchens cemetery near Oakville in Lawrence County.
- William Thomas Lindsey, born 21 September 1839 in Lawrence County, died 13 January 1892, Lawrence County. On 10 January 1866 in Lawrence County, he married America Louise, daughter of Edward Augustus Bracken and Sarah Rhodes. After America died on 9 April 1868, on 2 December 1868 in Lawrence County, he married Martha C., daughter of Samuel and Frances Livingston. William and Martha are buried at the Lindsey cemetery near Speake; America is buried at the Bald Knob cemetery near Five Points in Lawrence County.
- George Lindsey, born about 1843 in Lawrence County. I find no record of George after his listing in his parents’ household on the 1860 federal census in Lawrence County. Knox’s History of Morgan County, cited infra, n. 6, states (p. 126) that Wesley and Clarissa Lindsey had four children — James Dennis, William, Sis, and Sam. This suggests that in addition to the last-born twin sons who died at birth, George also died young.
- Mary Caroline Lindsey, born 17 May 1844 in Lawrence County, died in 1928 in Lawrence County. On 10 September 1865 in Lawrence County, she married Samuel Henry, son of Tollerson Hampton and Margaret Irwin. Both are buried in the Lebanon cemetery at Moulton.
- Mark Samuel Lindsey, born October 1846 in Lawrence County, died 11 March 1906 in Morgan County. On 15 September 1869 in Lawrence County, Samuel married Emily S., daughter of John Marshall Franks and Frances Johnson. Following her death on 24 May 1878, he married on 13 March 1879 in Lawrence County, Mary Ann, daughter of Charles Washington Pitt and Nancy Jane Sivley.
- John and David Lindsey, twin sons, were born and died 8 June 1851 in Lawrence County. Both are buried in the old Lindsey cemetery (now Lindsey Memorial Garden) at Oakville in Lawrence County.
[1] Information about this tombstone is in Phil Waldrep, Cemeteries of Lawrence County, Alabama, vol. 1 (P.O. Box 148, Trinity, Alabama, 1993), p. 322. Waldrep describes the Lindsey Cemetery as “an old community cemetery.” Note that some other sources describe this cemetery as the Valley Grove Cemetery, but Waldrep thinks that Valley Grove is a now-lost cemetery that once stood beside the schoolhouse in the community of Speake. The Lindsey Cemetery in which Wesley Lindsey is buried is different from the old Lindsey family cemetery in which his parents Mark and Mary Jane Dinsmore Lindsey are buried along with their son Dennis and wife Jane Brooks. That cemetery was historically identified as “the” Lindsey family cemetery, but the name for it has shifted in recent years to the Lindsey Memorial Garden Cemetery. Fielding Wesley Lindsey’s Find a Grave memorial page, originally created by Sharon Engle and now maintained by me, has photos of his tombstone by F.H. Terry and by Ray and Marty Lindsey. Another photo appears in Henry C. Lindsey, The Mark Lindsey Heritage, 1740-1982 (priv. publ., Brownwood, Texas, 1983), p. 38.
[2] S.W. Barbee, “Old Lawrence Reminiscent,” Moulton Advertiser (20 April 1909), p. 1, col. 2-4.
[3] A.G. Copeland, “Reminiscences of Morgan County, No. 3,” Alabama Enquirer (Hartselle) (17 October 1889), p. 3, col. 4.
[4] Diary of Reverend Samuel A. Agnew of Mississippi, 3-4 August 1854, original in the collection of University of North Carolina’s Wilson Library (Chapel Hill).
[5] James Edmond Saunders, Early Settlers of Alabama (New Orleans, 1899), pp. 122-3.
[6] Copeland, “Reminiscences of Morgan County, No. 3”; John Knox, A History of Morgan County, Alabama (Decatur, Alabama: Decatur Printing Co., 1967), p. 126.
[7] The original marriage bond is on file at the Lawrence County courthouse under jurisdiction of Probate Court; these records have been indexed by Lawrence County Archives, and microfilmed by the Family History Library in Salt Lake City.
[8] See James Mallory, “Fear God and Walk Humbly”: The Agricultural Journal of James Mallory, 1843-1877 (Tuscaloosa: Univ. of Alabama Press, 1997), p. 517, n. 23.
[9] Lawrence County, Alabama, Deed Bk. I, pp. 49-50; Lawrence County, Alabama, Circuit Court #3043, 3045, 3046, 3048, 3049; box 35, folder 4; box 173, folders 41, 49-51.
[10] 1840 federal census, Lawrence County, Alabama, p. 207.
[11] Ibid., p. 209.
[12] See Adjutant General’s Office of Alabama, Register of Officers, 1820-1863, vol. 4, p.180 (original in Alabama Department of Archives and History).
[13] The letter is transcribed in Mark Lindsey Heritage, pp. 117-8. This source does not have an indication of who owned the original letter when Mark Lindsey Heritage was published in 1983.
[14] Lawrence County, Alabama, Guardian Bonds 1845-50, pp. 33-4.
[15] Lawrence County, Alabama, Loose Court Records, box 145, folder 72.
[16] S. W. Barbee, “Old Lawrence Reminiscent,” Moulton Advertiser, 13 October 1908, p. 1.
[17] Morgan County, Alabama, Orphans Court Minutes Bk. 10, p. 8.
[18] Ibid., pp. 112, 115.
[19] Morgan County, Alabama, Chancery Court Minutes, Bk. 1843-1855, pp. 530-547.
[20] Lawrence County, Alabama, Bond Bk. 1850, unpaginated.
[21] Lawrence County, Alabama, 1850 federal census, p. 382, 8th district (dwelling/family 245, November).
[22] See Myra Borden, “Agricultural Schedules, 1840-1910,” Old Lawrence Reminiscences 11,3 (September 1997), p. 79.
[23] Lawrence County, Alabama, Orphans Court Bk. A, p. 446.
[24] Ibid.
[25] 1860 federal census, Lawrence County, Alabama, p. 931 (dwelling/family 318, 14 July).
[26] Myra L. Borden, “1860 Agricultural Census,” Old Lawrence Reminiscences 12,4 (December 1998), p. 150, citing p. 11 of the original.
[27] See Cemeteries of Lawrence County, Alabama, vol. 1, p. 322; and Clarissa Brooks Lindsey’s Find a Grave memorial page, created by Warren Glenn.
[28] James Brooks’s bible register is transcribed in Memory A. Lester, “Bible Record of James Brooks,” Daughters of the American Revolution Magazine 86,11 (November 1952), p. 1177. The transcript states that Memory A. Lester copied the register at the home of the bible’s owner Mrs. C.A. Young, Rt. 2, Moulton, Alabama, in June 1951. No information is provided about who recorded this information in the bible of James Brooks or where or when the bible was published. A note by Memory A. Lester says that the bible appears to have belonged to James’s son James Irwin Brooks.
[29] Moulton Advertiser, 15 October 1896, p. 3, col. 1. The obituary is also abstracted in Myra Thrasher Borden, Footprints in Time: Abstracts from Lawrence County, Alabama, Newspapers 1891-1905 (Mt. Hope, Alabama: Borden, 1993), p. 117.
[30] 1870 federal census, Lawrence County, Alabama, township 8, range 6, Danville post office, p. 42B (dwelling 46/family 47, 24 August); 1880 federal census, Lawrence County, Alabama, township 7, range 6 beat 9, Oakville post office, p. 394D (dwelling 72/family 71, 5 June).
[31]The diary of Frances J. Torrence is transcribed in Mary Novella Gibson-Brittain, Marie Brittain-Craig, and Marjorie Craig Churchill, The History and Genealogy of Some Pioneer North Alabama Families (Flagstaff, Arizona: Northland, 1969), pp. 97-113.
Begats and Bequeathals 
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