Or, Subtitled: Hilpa and Zilpah and Biblical (and Pseudo-Biblical) Naming Patterns in 19th-Century America
This posting is a continuation of the discussion of the children of Nancy Whitlock and her husband Abner Bryson. The previous posting discussed Nancy and Abner’s first two children, Thomas Whitlock Bryson and Catharine Bryson Williams.
Or, Subtitled: The one child of Thomas and Sarah Whitlock Brooks who remained in Wayne County, Kentucky, dying there of childbirth
6. The sixth child of Thomas Brooks (1775-1838) and Sarah Whitlock (1774-1837), Hannah Brooks, who was named for her grandmother Hannah Phillips Whitlock, was born 5 September 1811. This date of birth is recorded on her tombstone in Bethesda cemetery, at Bethesda in Wayne County, Kentucky, and in her obituary in the Louisville and Nashville Christian Advocate on 23 February 1854.[1] As with her brother Alexander Mackey Brooks, the sibling born immediately before her, her birthdate is not recorded in her parents’ family bible. We know she was a daughter of Thomas Brooks, however, since his 8 October 1838 will in Morgan County, Alabama, names Hannah Huffaker as his daughter.[2] As documents cited in the posting I have just linked state, Thomas’s estate documents show that Hannah’s husband was Wesley Huffaker.
Or, Subtitled: “Born in 1823 on the site where her death occurred and where she had always lived”
As the previous posting indicates, a brief biography of Robert Brooks in Biographical History of Tippecanoe, White, Jasper, Newton, Benton, Warren and Pulaski Counties, Indiana states that his children with wife Rachel Adkins were Margaret, Thomas, William, Millie, Nancy, John, Betsy, Charlotte, Mary, Daniel, Sarah A., and James.[1] This source appears to be listing these children in order of birth, but information about their dates of birth on various documents including federal census reports seems to provide a slightly different birth order for the children. I am indebted to researchers Thelma Brooks Morgan and Marilyn Merritt, both descendants of Thomas and Rachel, whose research notes I cited in the previous posting, for some of the following information about the children of Robert Brooks and Rachel Adkins:
Or, Subtitled: A Litany of Perhaps and Supposes: How Do You Solve a Problem Like the Ashdales? How Do You Hold a Moonbeam in Your Hand?
This posting on the Brooks line I now want to discuss will, I’m afraid, be full of words like “perhaps,” “suppose,” “seems likely” — qualifiers signaling how sparse the information I’ve been able to find about this family line is, so that the best I can do with it is to make educated conjectures on the basis of such limited evidence as appears to be available.
Begats and Bequeathals 