State of Alabama v. James I. Brooks and John B. Smith, Lawrence County, Alabama, loose-papers court files box 22, folder 54, circuit court case 49
Or, Subtitled: Yet More Affrays! Public Fighting “to the Terror of the People; and Against the Peace and Dignity of the State of Alabama”
In the previous posting, I began providing information about the children of James Brooks (1772-1835) and Nancy Isbell. That posting discussed James and Nancy’s first two children, sons Godfrey Isbell Brooks and Thomas R. Brooks. As I noted in the linked posting, the family bible owned by James and Nancy’s son James Irwin Brooks gives the named and birthdates of all of James and Nancy’s children, and is my source for this information. After sons Godfrey and Thomas, James and Nancy had the following children:
Inventory of estate of James Brooks, Lawrence County, Alabama, Orphans Court Minutes, Bk. D, pp. 162-3
Or, Subtitled: 17 Hedd Hogs, 1 Gray Horse, 1 Looking Glass, 1 Large Bible, etc.
In my last posting, I shared with you the information I have about the life of James Brooks, son of Thomas and Margaret Brooks of Frederick and Wythe Counties, Virginia, from his birth in Frederick County in 1772 to the death of his wife Nancy Isbell Brooks at Oakville in Lawrence County, Alabama, on 9 October 1835. I told you that James moved with his parents and siblings from Frederick to Wythe County, Virginia, in 1792, after James had come of age in Frederick County in 1789.
Wayne County, Kentucky, Marriage Bonds 1801-1813, p. 66
Or, Subtitled: From Virginia to Alabama by Way of Kentucky and Tennessee
We’ve met the second child of Thomas and Margaret Brooks, their son James Brooks, in previous postings. As we’ve seen, James’s year of birth, 1772, is recorded in the register of a bible belonging to James and his wife Nancy Isbell. A transcript of this bible register was published in November 1952 by Memory Aldridge Lester in the Daughters of the American Revolution Magazine, with a note that the bible belonged at that time to Nettie Raymond Brooks Young of Moulton, Alabama, and Lester had transcribed the bible at Mrs. Young’s house in June 1951.[1] Lester published the same transcript again in 1974 in a book entitled Old Southern Bible Records.[2] The posting linked above provides digital images of both transcripts.
“Brooks Bible,” Itawamba[Mississippi]Settlers 8,3 (September, 1988), pp. 151-2
Or, Subtitled: A Virginia ➤ Kentucky ➤ Alabama Migration Pattern
Introduction: Now the Brooks Family Line
At the end of April 2021, I completed a lengthy series of postings that I began in November 2019. This series shared my information about my Lindsey immigrant ancestor, Dennis Linchey, who arrived in Richmond County, Virginia, aboard the ship Expectation some time before 1 June 1718 as an indentured servant from Ireland, and about his descendants. The series of postings that runs from November 2019 to April 2021 provides all the information I have about the descendants of Dennis Linchey, whose surname shifted to Lindsey before his death in August 1762 in Granville County, North Carolina — though my series does not follow family lines down to the last generations in each line.
Dennis Lindsey, 9 September 1818 land patent, Huntsville, Alabama, land office, Bureau of Land Management Tract Books for Alabama, vol. 19, p. 95
Or, Subtitled: Alabama Fever and Skyrocketing Cotton Prices as Alabama Opened to White Settlers
By 9 September 1818, Dennis Lindsey had moved his family from Wayne County, Kentucky, to Lawrence County, Alabama, since he patented a piece of land on that date in township 7, range 6 west, section 8 at the Huntsville land office.[1] Alabama would become a state the following year, so this land was in Mississippi Territory when Dennis Lindsey patented it. As my previous posting showed, this land was adjacent (on the west) to what would become the town of Oakville in Lawrence County, a town that Dennis would play a role in founding. The fact that Dennis Lindsey disappears from Wayne County, Kentucky, tax returns after 1816 and then shows up acquiring land in Lawrence County, Alabama, in 1818 indicates, I think, that he moved his family to Alabama in 1817. The Huntsville Republican newspaper contains a notice on 14 October 1817 (p. 3, col. 4) that an unclaimed letter was waiting in the Huntsville post office for Dennis Lindsey, further evidence that he moved to Alabama in that year.
Begats and Bequeathals 