Children of Thomas Whitlock (abt. 1745 – 1830) and Wife Hannah Phillips: Sarah Whitlock (1774 – 1837) and Husband Thomas Brooks

13 November 1839 account of Jane Brooks Lindsey in loose-papers estate file of Thomas Brooks held by Morgan County Archives

Or, Subtitled: “They were married together February 14, in the year of our Lord 1796

Sarah Whitlock was, if I have the children of Thomas Whitlock and Hannah Phillips ordered correctly, the couple’s fourth child. Sarah’s my 4th-great-grandmother. I’ve shared all that I know about her life in a number of previous postings. As this previous posting states, Sarah’s name is recorded in a family bible that belonged to her and her husband Thomas Brooks, and which passed from them to their oldest son Charles Brooks.[1] This bible is discussed in another previous posting

Children of Thomas Whitlock (abt. 1745 – 1830) and Wife Hannah Phillips: Daughter Who Married John Hammons (1)

Wayne County, Kentucky, Court Order Bk. A, p. 5

Or, Subtitled: A Cross-Slit and Underkeel in Each Ear — The Value of Earmarks in Genealogy

According to Margaret Austin of Bay Village, Ohio, who researched the Hammons family exhaustively for years and shared her research notes with me in April 1997, Thomas Whitlock’s son-in-law John Hammons appears to have been born about 1770-2. Margaret based this date on the fact that John Hammons Jr. appears on a jury list in Patrick County, Virginia, on 13-14 August 1793 in the cases of Lyne vs. King and Adams vs. Mankin and Keaton.[1] Margaret Austin’s notes also state that John Hammonds Jr. provided a deposition on 8 October 1792 in the Patrick County case of Dickerson vs. Laurance, and was sued on 13 May 1793 for debt in Patrick County in the case of Senter vs. Hammonds Jr. Note the variant spellings of the surname: Hammons and Hammonds (as well as Hammon/Hammond).

Children of Thomas Brooks (1775 – 1838) and Wife Sarah Whitlock: Samuel K. Brooks (1815-1898)

Samuel K. Brooks and wife Mary J. Gilstrap, photo uploaded by phalefamilytree to the Ancestry tree, “Hale/McConnell/Craig Family Tree”

Or, Subtitled: A volume of Wesley’s notes, a lot of books, a looking glass, a lot of queensware, etc.

8. The eighth child of Thomas Brooks (1775-1838) and Sarah Whitlock (1774-1837), Samuel K. Brooks, was born 19 December 1815 in Wayne County, Kentucky. This date of birth is recorded in his parents’ bible. When the bible register was transcribed and published in 1988 in the journal Itawamba Settlers, Samuel’s name was transcribed as Sanford.[1] It’s clear that Sanford Brooks is Samuel K. Brooks, since the same date of birth is recorded on the tombstone of Samuel K. Brooks in Shiloh cemetery in Lee County, Mississippi.[2]

Samuel K. Brooks tombstone, Shiloh cemetery, Lee County, Mississippi, a close-up photo taken by William D. Lindsey

Children of Thomas Brooks (1775 – 1838) and Wife Sarah Whitlock: Hannah Brooks (1811 – 1853) and Husband Wesley Huffaker 

Wesley Huffaker’s signature to 2 May 1850 letter to David Dinsmore Lindsey in loose-papers estate file of Thomas Brooks held by Morgan County, Alabama, Archives

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.

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]

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

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 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.

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

“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.