Tag: Morgan Co. Alabama

Children of Mary Brooks (1745/1750 – aft. 15 May 1815) and Jacob Hollingsworth (1742 – 1822) — Sarah Hollingsworth (abt. 1770 – 10 Sept. 1808/15 May 1821) and Husband James Garner

William D. Lindsey1 Comment
Charles Christopher Sheats (1839-1904), from Joseph W. Danielson, “Christopher Sheats,” Encyclopedia of Alabama; photo courtesy of Reita Jones

Or, Subtitled: Difficulties of Tracing Women’s Lines, Especially When Women Die Young

About the second child of Jacob Hollingsworth and Mary Brooks, their daughter Sarah and her husband James Garner, I have scant information. As noted previously, Sarah was born 1770-1, probably in Guilford County, North Carolina, and predeceased her father Jacob Hollingsworth. His will, made 15 May 1815 in Franklin County, Georgia, states that Sarah had died and makes a bequest to her son Jacob Garner.[1] As has also been noted, Sarah’s son Jacob Garner married Mary Hunter, daughter of Evan Todhunter, whose son John T. Hunter moved to Lawrence County, Alabama, where his family intermarried with the Lindsey and Brooks families. I find no evidence that James and Sarah Hollingsworth Garner had more children than their son Jacob, and he and wife Mary Hunter seem to have had a single child, a daughter Mary Elizabeth, so there is not much possibility of biographical information about James and Sarah passing down multiple family lines that followed them.

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Thomas Madison Brooks (1775-1838) and Wife Sarah Whitlock (1774-1837): Alabama Years, 1836-1838

William D. Lindsey1 Comment
Original will (holographic, page 1) of Thomas Madison Brooks of Morgan County, Alabama,, 2 October 1838, in loose-papers estate file of Thomas Brooks held by Morgan County Archives

Or, Subtitled: The Mystery of an Estate Selling Land to Which the Decedent Does Not Have Title

With this posting, I’ll provide information about the final phase of the lives of Thomas Madison Brooks and wife Sarah Whitlock, after they moved in November 1836 from Wayne County, Kentucky, to Morgan County, Alabama, to join their adult children who had settled in adjoining Lawrence County, where Thomas’s brother James had died in 1835, and Wayne County neighbors including Rev. Elliott Jones.  As I state at the end of the previous posting, because both Thomas and Sarah died not very long after they made their final move to Alabama, and doctors’ receipts in Thomas’s estate file indicate that medications like laudanum and morphine were prescribed for what appear to have been painful illnesses, I suspect that both were already sick at the time of their move, perhaps both with a lingering, debilitating illness such as cancer.

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Thomas Madison Brooks (1775-1838) and Wife Sarah Whitlock (1774-1837): Kentucky Years, 1798-1836

William D. Lindsey3 Comments
Thomas Brooks’s affidavit, 10 March 1804, Wayne County, Kentucky, in Whitlock v. Whitlock, Commonwealth of Virginia Chancery District Court, Staunton, box 10, file 38

Or, Subtitled: “A Rough Hardy Race of Men, Very Large & Stout, & Altogether an Excellent Population, for a New Country”

Thomas and Sarah Brooks Establish Their Young Family in Kentucky (1798-9)

In the previous posting about Thomas Madison Brooks (1775-1838), I track him up to 1798, when he moved with wife Sarah Whitlock and infant daughter Jane from Wythe County, Virginia, to Pulaski (soon to be Wayne) County, Kentucky. As that posting notes, when the Brooks family made that move, Thomas and Sarah were a young couple, he 23 and she 24. You may have noticed that the previous postings discussing the Virginia beginnings of this Brooks family cited no records for Thomas in Wythe County other than tax records — with the exception of the record in his family bible stating that Thomas and Sarah married 14 February 1796.

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Thomas Madison Brooks (1775-1838) and Wife Sarah Whitlock (1774-1837): Virginia Beginnings, 1775-1798

William D. Lindsey4 Comments
“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.

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Children of Dennis Lindsey (1794-1836) and Jane Brooks: Mark Jefferson Lindsey (1820-1878)

William D. Lindsey2 Comments
Pen-and-ink drawing of Mark Jefferson Lindsey from “an old family bible,” reproduced in Henry C. Lindsey, The Mark Lindsey Heritage (Brownwood, Texas, 1982), p. 3

Or, Subtitled: Migration of Alabama Families to Northwest Louisiana, Late 1840s and Early 1850s

Establishing Mark’s Birthdate

In the bible of his sister Frances Rebecca Kellogg, Mark Jefferson Lindsey recorded his birthdate, stating that he was born “in the year 1820 Oct the 9,” son of D. and Jane Lindsey. Above the diary entry, Mark has written the date on which he made this record: “December the 4 1853.” We’re able to know that Mark himself wrote this entry since his handwriting matches that of other documents he wrote. In the signatures of Mark below, note the stylized J, for instance, with the loop running back through the top of it, and the stylized capital M. The first is from a 15 September 1838 deed of trust between Jacob H. Huffaker and John M. Davis in Oakville, Lawrence County, Alabama, for a debt Huffaker owed Davis, with Mark signing as trustee.[1] The second is Mark’s signature as he gave bond on 19 October 1839 for his marriage to Mary Ann Harrison in Lawrence County.[2] The birth record for Mark in his sister Frances Rebecca’s bible is, it’s easy to ascertain, written in the same hand — by Mark himself.

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Children of Dennis Lindsey (1794-1836) and Jane Brooks: Margaret Tranquilla Lindsey Hunter (1834-1921)

William D. Lindsey2 Comments
William and Margaret Lindsey Hunter, abt. 1870, photo uploaded by Kelly Browne to Margaret’s Find a Grave memorial page, Liberty cemetery, Martin, Red River Parish, Louisiana

Or, Subtitled: “Prominent as Planters, Merchants, Ministers of the Gospel”

Margaret Tranquilla Lindsey, daughter of Dennis Lindsey (1794-1836) and Jane Brooks, was born 14 January 1834 at Oakville in Lawrence County, Alabama. This date of birth is found on her tombstone at Liberty Baptist cemetery, Martin, Red River Parish, Louisiana.[1] Margaret’s son William Marshall Hunter pastored Liberty church for a number of years. It was founded by Reverend John Dupree, grandfather of Marshall’s wife Laura Jane Dupree.

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Children of Dennis Lindsey (1794-1836) and Jane Brooks: Mary Jane Lindsey (1826-1850) and Husband James Irwin Brooks

William D. Lindsey1 Comment
Marriage license and return from original records marriage file; recorded in Lawrence County, Alabama, Marriage Bk. B, p. 256

Or, Subtitled: A Wife Dying Too Soon, Leaving a Bereaved Husband and Two Little Boys

Mary Jane Lindsey was the seventh child (and second daughter) of Dennis Lindsey and Jane Brooks. Her older sister Sarah Brooks Lindsey had been named for Jane’s mother Sarah Whitlock Brooks. Mary Jane was named for her father’s mother Mary Jane Dinsmore Lindsey.

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Children of Dennis Lindsey (1794-1836) and Jane Brooks: Samuel Asbury Lindsey (1825/6 – 1865)

William D. Lindsey2 Comments
Samuel Asbury Lindsey, Mexican-American War discharge papers, photocopied in Henry C. Lindsey, The Mark Lindsey Heritage (Brownwood, Texas; 1982), p. 115

Or, Subtitled: “I Will Take Her in My Arms Back to Texas and Make a Fortune for Her”

Several sources provide information about Samuel’s date of birth. Those sources, unfortunately, conflict with each other. When he enrolled for service in the Mexican-American War on 6 March 1847 at Huntsville, Alabama, in Company H of the 13th Infantry, he gave his age as 23. This information is recorded in the U.S. Army Register of Enlistments, which also notes that he was a farmer born in Lawrence County, Alabama, was 6’1”, had light hair, gray eyes, and a fair complexion.[1]

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Children of Dennis Lindsey (1794-1836) and Jane Brooks: Thomas Madison Lindsey (1821-1898)

William D. LindseyLeave a comment
Ancestry user Evelyn May has uploaded this photo to her tree Evelyn May/McCoy Family tree, with a caption stating that it is a photo of Thomas Madison Lindsey. Since photography came along after 1860 for the most part, this photo would have to date from the 1860s, I think, before he turned 50 years of age.

Or, Subtitled: “Jumping High into the Air and Touching His Toes with His Hands, He Gave a Loud Yell or Yodel”

In my account of the children of Dennis Lindsey (1794-1836) and Jane Brooks, I am going to skip from their second child, Sarah Brooks Lindsey Speake, to the couple’s fourth child, Thomas Madison Lindsey. I’m setting Dennis and Jane’s third child, Mark Jefferson Lindsey, aside for now. He’s my direct ancestor, my 2-great-grandfather, and because I have more information about him than about most of his siblings, I will save my account of his life until last, as I discuss the children of Dennis Lindsey and Jane Brooks.

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Children of Dennis Lindsey (1794-1836) and Jane Brooks: Sarah Brooks Lindsey Speake (1818-1889) — Children of James and Sarah Lindsey Speake

William D. Lindsey1 Comment
Charles Washington Speake and Dixie West Speake and family, from Harold L. Speake and Maxine Gibson, “Speake Family,” in Heritage of Lawrence County, Alabama (Clanton, Alabama: Heritage Publ. Co., 1998), p. 242

Or, Subtitled: Bald Judicial Caputs and Spelling Eleemosynary

James B. Speake and Sarah Brooks Lindsey had eight children — Henry Clay, John Marshall, Dennis Basil, James Tucker, Charles Washington, Daniel Webster, Mary Frances, and a baby who died at birth. Mary Frances died at age four. The only information I have found about the last two children is in the 17 February 1924 letter of James and Sarah’s son Charles Washington Speake to A. Howard Speake of Brooklyn, New York, cited in a previous posting. My previous posting provides biographies of Henry Clay and Daniel Webster Speake from Dictionary of Alabama Biography,[1] as well as photographs of both of them previously owned by Harold Layman Speake, a descendant of their brother Charles Washington Speake.[2]

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