Month: November 2022

A little note to say that I have now added quite a bit of new information to this previous posting about Alexander M. Brooks and his years living in Houston. I’ve abstracted all information I have been able to find about him in Harris County, Texas, deed books from 1842-1884, after which FamilySearch does not have digitized copies of Harris County deed books.

Or, Subtitled: Buying and Selling in Bastrop and Houston, Texas

I’ve now added additional information to a previous posting I made in August this year about Alexander Mackey Brooks, focusing on his life after he moved to Texas and settled in Bastrop. On my recent trip to the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, I abstracted information about him from the deed records of Bastrop and Harris Counties, Texas. The posting I’ve just linked focuses on the new Bastrop County material I’ve added to his file, including his purchase in May 1849, several months after he married his second wife Aletha Sorrells (Hope, Freel, Patterson, Pierce), of lot 2 on Main Street in Bastrop, the lot on which he built his historic house in or by 1851. Alexander bought the lot from Samuel B. Morris, and he and Aletha sold this lot in January 1861, after they moved to Houston, to William F. Allen. I’ll next add to my previous posting about Alexander’s life in Houston what I’ve now found about him in Harris County deed books. Note that the deed records of Bastrop County show him buing enslaved persons (see the deed at the head of the posting).

Or, Subtitled: Division of Land Among Brooks Heirs from a League Granted to Jonathan D. Morris of the Austin Colony, with a Portion sold to the Eblins Who Sold to Martha Elizabeth Hill Brooks

I have just added more information to a previous posting I made this past August about Thomas Jefferson Brooks (1835/8 – 1862), his wife Martha Elizabeth Hill, and their children Robert Alexander Brooks, Eula Lee Brooks Wilkes, and Thomas Jefferson Brooks. On my recent research trip to the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, I find a deed the three children made on 1 June 1887 in Bastrop County (Bastrop County, Texas, Deed Bk. 11, pp. 49-52), which states the date and place of death of Martha Hill Brooks. The deed also states that Martha died owning 225 acres in Basrop County east of the Colorado River and 13 miles south of Bastrop, which had been sold by Jonathan D. Morris to John Eblin and then by George Eblin to Martha. The land came to Morris as a league of land granted to him as a settler in Stephen F. Austin’s colony. The 225 acres Martha owned were divided among her children equally by a drawing of lots, and in June 1887, Thomas Jr. and Eula Lee/Eulalie deeded to their brother Robert 50 acres out of the middle of the tract — hence this deed.

Or, Subtitled: Dim Digital Documents and Louisiana Conveyance Records

I’ve now added several new pieces of information to a posting I made in July 2021 about Jacob Hollingsworth, son of Jacob Hollingsworth and Mary Brooks. On my trip some weeks ago to the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, I was able to go through the conveyance records of Caddo Parish, Louisiana, and I gathered information from them about Jacob’s land transactions in the 1840s in that parish. I’ve now added that information to the posting I’ve just linked.

Or, Subtitled: “The sale bill belonging to this Estate on making final record could not be found supposed never to have been filed”

Another previous posting to which I’ve added substantial information I found during my recent research trip to the Family History Library in Salt Lake City: this posting I made in April 2002 about Robert Brooks, son of Thomas Brooks and Margaret Beaumont/Beamon. I have now added to the previous posting some information I found about Robert in Warder W. Stevens’s Centennial History of Washington County, Indiana; information about his presence in (or absene from) the deed records of Indiana counties in which he lived or had land, which included Washington, Lawrence, Clinton, and Tippecanoe Counties; and Robert’s probate record in Tippecanoe County’s probate court order book, along with the final settlement of his estate from the county’s final settlement books.

Or, Subtitled: Deeds and More Deeds

In the work I did recently at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, I went through the deed books of Bastrop and Williamson County, Texas, to fill in gaps in my research on Charles Wesley Brooks, son of James Brooks and Nancy Isbell. As this previous posting notes, in 1854, Charles moved from Lawrence County, Alabama, and joined his cousin Alexander Mackey Brooks there. In 1855 in Bastrop County, Charles married Elizabeth Christian Burleson, daughter of James Burleson and Mary Randolph Buchanan. Charles and Elizabeth then ranched and farmed in Bastrop County until 1878, when they moved to Georgetown in Williamson County so that their children could be schooled in the preparatory school of the newly founded Southwestern University.