Or, Subtitled: And more new material to add to old postings
Here’s another posting to which I added material in the past two weeks as I did research at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, adding material to previous postings here when I had access to documents that are under lock and key in the FamilySearch system, unless you access those files through a computer in the Family History Library system:
27 June 1842 receipt of James R. Brooks to Milton McClanahan for $250 from estate of Thomas Brooks, in Thomas Brooks’s loose-papers estate file in Morgan County, Alabama
Or, Subtitled: “Then began … the emigration to California, by land and sea, of 1849 and 1850,” P. Sioli, Historical Souvenir of El Dorado County, California
The family of Thomas Brooks (1775-1838) and Sarah Whitlock (1774-1837) fascinates me because of the way Thomas and Sarah’s children scattered to so many different places. Only one daughter, Hannah, with husband Wesley Huffaker, stayed in Wayne County, Kentucky, where Thomas and Sarah raised their family. Six went to Lawrence and Morgan Counties, Alabama, where Thomas and Sarah Whitlock Brooks spent the final year or two of their lives (in Morgan County): Jane (married Dennis Lindsey), Charles, Alexander, Samuel, James R., and Sarah. Charles and Samuel then moved from Alabama to Itawamba County, Mississippi, and Alexander lit out for Texas.
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]
Or, Subtitled: “Two children were placed in baskets and strapped on a horse, looking like a peddler’s pack-horse”
This posting continues a two-part series (here and here) that I did previously about Margaret Brooks (1803-1855), a daughter of Thomas Brooks (1775-1835) and Sarah Whitlock. Margaret married Ransom Van Winkle, son of Abraham Van Winkle and Charity Sallee, in Wayne County, Kentucky, in 1823, and in 1829, the couple moved their family to Morgan County, Illinois, where Margaret and Ransom died and are buried.
29 June 1847 (or 1849?) receipt of Ransom Van Winkle for payment of his inheritance in right of wife Margaret from Thomas Brooks, and for his brother-in-law Thomas Whitlock Brooks’s share of inheritance, in loose-papers probate file of Thomas Brooks held by the Morgan County Archives in Decatur
Or, Subtitled: “[They] settled on the unbroken prairie, prepared to cultivate the soil; there were spent the last days of the old folks”
This post is a continuation of a previous post tracking the family of Margaret Brooks, daughter of Thomas Brooks and Sarah Whitlock, and her husband Ransom Van Winkle in Wayne County, Kentucky. An obituary of their son Alexander Van Winkle confirms that Ransom and Margaret Brooks Van Winkle moved their family to Morgan County, Illinois, in the fall of 1829.[1]