Benjamin Benton Hollingsworth (abt. 1785 – 1844): Additional Material

15 December 1858 petition of William Clark Kelly for probate of estate of Benjamin Benton Hollingsworth, Rusk County, Texas, Probate Bk. F, p. 669

Or, Subtitled: More new material added to a previous posting

Here is another addition I’ve made to a previous postings on this blog, after my visit to the Family History Library in Salt Lake City gave me access in the past two week to documents previously locked to me as I worked at my home computer on these previous postings (I discussed this matter in my previous posting):

Children of Hannah Brooks (1811 – 1853) and Husband Wesley Huffaker of Wayne County, Kentucky 

“J.A. Huffaker Dead,” Courier-Journal (Louisville, Kentucky) (4 January 1902), p. 7, col. 5

Or, Subtitled: “He began business at Monticello in the general store of Huffaker & Wilhite”

This posting is a continuation of the previous one, which discussed Hannah Brooks, daughter of Thomas Brooks (1775-1838) and Sarah Whitlock. As the previous posting indicates, Hannah married Wesley Huffaker, son of Isaac Huffaker and Elizabeth Hutchinson, in Wayne County, Kentucky, in 1828 and lived there with Wesley up to her death in 1853. Hannah and Wesley had ten children. The following is what I know about the children of Wesley Huffaker and Hannah Brooks:

Children of Thomas Brooks (1775 – 1838) and Wife Sarah Whitlock: Thomas Whitlock Brooks (1805-1879) of Wayne County, Kentucky, and Randolph County, Missouri

History of Randolph and Macon Counties, Missouri (St. Louis: National Historical Co., 1884), pp. 541-3

Or, Subtitled: “He entered land and devoted his time to improving his place and farming”

4. Thomas Whitlock Brooks, the fourth child of Thomas Brooks (1775-1838) and Sarah Whitlock (1774-1837), was born 22 December 1805. This date is recorded in his father’s family bible (and see also here). As the postings I’ve just linked state, I have not seen or found information about the bible’s provenance — except we know that the bible originally belonged to Thomas Brooks and was bought by Thomas’s son Charles at his father’s estate sale in April 1839 — and haven’t seen the original bible register. I’m relying for information on a transcript of the register (by an unidentified person) published in 1988.[1] The transcriber of the bible read the name of this son of Thomas and Sarah Whitlock Brooks as Thomas R. Brooks. A biography of George H. Cottingham, who married Thomas Whitlock Brooks’s daughter Sarah Margaret, in History of Randolph and Macon Counties, Missouri, gives Thomas Whitlock Brooks’s middle initial as B., and a biography of Thomas’s son William C. Brooks in the same work shows it as N.[2]

Children of Thomas Brooks (1775 – 1838) and Wife Sarah Whitlock: Margaret Brooks (1803-1855) and Husband Ransom Van Winkle — Wayne County, Kentucky Years

Tombstone of Margaret Brooks Van Winkle and Ransom Van Winkle, Franklin town cemetery, Franklin, Morgan County, Illinois, by Connie Clark: see Find a Grave memorial page of Margaret Brooks Van Winkle, created by Vicki

Or, Subtitled: A Southeastern Kentucky Family Migrates to West Central Illinois, Late 1820s

The third child of Thomas Brooks and wife Sarah Whitlock of Wythe County, Virginia, Wayne County, Kentucky, and Morgan County, Alabama, was

Children of Thomas Brooks (1775 – 1838) and Wife Sarah Whitlock: Jane (1797 – 1852) and Charles Brooks (1800/1 – 1861)

Bond of Charles Brooks and John Stewart, 24 January 1823, for Charles’s marriage to Deniah Cornelius, see Lawrence County, Alabama, Marriage Bonds and Licenses 1820, available digitally at FamilySearch

Or, Subtitled: Wherein I Confess That I’ve Made a Whopper of a Mistake, about Which I Need to Tell Readers of This Blog

I need to start this posting with a confession. I make mistakes. I know that will shock you profoundly[!]. In working on this posting, I discovered I have made a colossal one, one that reverberates through previous postings about my Brooks family. Finding that I have gone wrong about one key piece of information will now require me to backtrack through previous postings and correct multiple erroneous statements based on one big wrong turn.

Children of Thomas Brooks (abt. 1747 – 1805) and Wife Margaret: Susanna Brooks and Husband Ezekiel Harlan (2)

Pennsylvania Gazette (20 September 1753), p. 3, col. 2

Or, Subtitled: “Wears a cap or wig, black velvet jacket and breeches, and ruffled ſhirts, but may change his apparel”

My previous posting tells you that Susanna Brooks and her husband Ezekiel Harlan have led me on a merry chase as I’ve tried to figure out even the most basic facts about them on the basis of limited evidence, including which particular Ezekiel Harlan Susanna married, when she was born, when and where the couple met, and when and where they died. I’ve become fairly confident that the Ezekiel Harlan whom Susanna married was an Ezekiel Harlan who was born in 1769-1770, and was the son of Ezekiel Harlan (born 1732-6) who was son of Ezekiel Harlan (1707-1754) and wife Hannah Oborn of Chester County, Pennsylvania. To add to the confusion created by the plethora of Ezekiels in this line, the Ezekiel Harlan born in 1769-1770 had a son Ezekiel, too, who was likely born around 1787-8, and who appears in records of Hardin County, Kentucky, along with his father.

Children of Thomas Brooks (abt. 1747 – 1805) and Wife Margaret: Margaret Brooks (1772 – 1857) and Husband Joseph Day

Kentucky State Historical Society and State Archives, Grayson County, Kentucky, Registry of Deaths 1857, in Kentucky Birth, Marriage, and Death Records, 1852-1910digitized at the Family Search site

Or, Subtitled: “Joseph Day Junr hath been Guilty of unneceſsary frequenting places of divertion & dancing”

In this posting, I’m returning to my ongoing project of tracking family lines stemming from Mary Brooks, who died in Frederick County, Virginia, in 1787. In previous postings, I’ve tracked the following children of Mary and their descendants: Mary (1745/1750 – abt. 1815), who married Jacob Hollingsworth; Elizabeth (1747/1750 – 1816), who married George Rice; Sarah (1750/1755 – 1810/1820), who married an Ashdale/Asdale/Asdell; and James, who did not marry. As I’ve also noted in this series of postings about the children of Mary Brooks, I know nothing about her daughter Susanna except that Mary’s will identifies Susanna as Susanna Haynes. 

Children of Mary Brooks (d. 1787, Frederick County, Virginia) — Susanna Brooks Haynes and James Brooks

Copy of will of James Brooks filed in Peter Peters and Wife vs. Admrs. of James Brooks, Frederick County, Virginia, Chancery Court 1831-007

Or, Subtitled: Old and week in body but of sound and perfect mind and memory

In a long series of postings of which this is the final one, I’ve been following the children named in the 9 July 1786 will of Mary Brooks of Frederick County, Virginia (and see also here), and have tracked the descendants of those children for a generation or two.[1] As we’ve seen, Mary’s will names the following children:

Children of Mary Brooks (1745/1750 – aft. 15 May 1815) and Jacob Hollingsworth (1742 – 1822) — Benjamin Benton Hollingsworth (abt. 1785-1844) and Wife Joicy Jones

Letter of Benjamin Hollingsworth, Carnesville, Franklin County, Georgia, Governor David B. Mitchell, 7 December 1812, in Telamon Cuyler Collection, Series 1. Historical Manuscripts holdings at Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Georgia Libraries, box 46, folder 11

Or, Subtitled: “Honoured Sir — If your Dignity will permit me to make a statement to you in regard to our frontier county

In a previous posting, I summarized the salient facts about the life of Benjamin Benton Hollingsworth, Jacob Hollingsworth and Mary Brooks’s last child — literally, the Benjamin of their declining years. As we see in the posting I’ve just linked, Benjamin was born after 1784 in Randolph County, North Carolina, and died 18 August 1844 in Benton County, Alabama.[1] We can conclude, more specifically, that Benjamin was likely born in or after 1785, since he does not appear with other males of his family on the tax list in Franklin County, Georgia in 1801, which indicates that he was not yet 16 or became 16 in 1801 after the tax list was compiled.[2] As Sadie Greening Sparks also notes, he does not appear as a drawer in the 1805 Georgia land lottery, and this means he was under 21 in 1805, therefore born after 1784.[3] Because Benjamin witnessed a deed of Joseph Dunnigan to Abner Dunnigan in Franklin County, Georgia, on 20 August 1803, a legal act that required him to be 18 years old at the time (though I’ve seen instances of minors witnessing deeds, too), I suspect he was born in 1785: see below for more about this deed.

Children of Mary Brooks (1745/1750 – aft. 15 May 1815) and Jacob Hollingsworth (1742 – 1822) — James Hollingsworth (1777/1780 – abt. 1822) and Wife Mary Jones

Reproduction of what appears to be an oil portrait of Salina Zora Belle Hollingsworth Patton in Eddie Patton and Mary Ellen Patton Roberts, “The Pattons of Pelham and the Civil War,” The Pathfinder [Grundy County, Tennessee] 17,2 (June 2012), pp. 16-20, online at the Grundy County, Tennessee, History website

Or, Subtitled:

As we’ve seen, researchers have placed the birth of James Hollingsworth, the seventh child (and fourth son) of Jacob Hollingsworth and Mary Brooks, between 1777-1780 in Guilford or Randolph County, North Carolina (Randolph was created from Guilford in 1779). In their classic accounts of the Hollingsworth and Harlan families, J. Adger Stewart and Alpheus Harlan both have James born in 1777.[1] Sadie Greening Sparks thinks that he was born in 1780.[2]