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:
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.
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.
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]
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
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
Begats and Bequeathals 