Or, Subtitled: Migration of a Brooks Family from Lawrence County, Alabama, to Itawamba County, Mississippi, and West to Texas
The following posting provides an outline sketch of basic information about the children of Charles Brooks (1800/1 – 1861) and wife Deniah Cornelius of Lawrence County, Alabama, and Itawamba County, Mississippi. As the postings I’ve just linked note, Charles Brooks, who administered the estate of his father Thomas Brooks in Morgan County, Alabama, purchased his father’s bible at Thomas Brooks’s estate sale in Morgan County. Charles and Deniah then recorded the names and dates of birth of their children in the register of the bible of Thomas Brooks.
Or, Subtitled: Migration of Families from Lawrence-Morgan Counties, Alabama, to Itawamba County, Mississippi, Following Depression of 1837
This posting is a continuation of a previous posting discussing the life of Charles Brooks (1800/1-1861), son of Thomas Brooks (1775-1838) and wife Sarah Whitlock. The previous posting tracks Charles in Lawrence County, Alabama, where he married Deniah Cornelius, daughter of Rowland Cornelius and Eleanor Watkins, on 27 January 1823, and where Charles and Deniah and their children lived until 1840, when the family moved to Itawamba County, Mississippi. As the posting I just linked also indicates, Charles appears in the estate records of his father Thomas Brooks, who died in Morgan County, Alabama, on 25 October 1838 with a will naming Charles, his oldest son, as his executor.
Bond of Charles Brooks and John Stewart, 24 January 1823, for Charles’s marriage to Deniah Cornelius, see Lawrence County, Alabama, Marriage Bonds and Licenses 1820, available digitally at FamilySearch
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.
S.W. Barbee, “Old Lawrence Reminiscent,” Moulton Advertiser (5 January 1909), p. 1, col. 3-4, transcribed by George A. O’Reilly, The History of E. James Brooks Family of Lawrence County, Alabama (1500 Trinity Road, Huntsville, Alabama 35802-2779; Oreilly0103@gmail.com). pp. 203-4
Or, Subtitled: More Affrays! —“His bellicose disposition led him into many a brawl with others, one of which cost him very dearly, since by it he lost an eye”
This posting is a continuation of two previous postings (here and here) discussing the children of James Brooks (1772-1835) and Nancy Isbell of Wayne County, Kentucky, Warren County, Tennessee, and Lawrence County, Alabama. The previous postings have discussed their children Godfrey Isbell Brooks, Thomas R. Brooks, Hannah Isbell Brooks, Margaret C. Brooks, and James Irwin Brooks. The next child of James Brooks and Nancy Isbell was:
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.
Original will (holographic, page 1) of Thomas 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 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.
“In Memoriam [Sarah Lindsey Speake],” Moulton Advertiser, 24 January 1889, p. 2, col. 5.
Or, Subtitled: “Hers Was a Strong Character — One on Which One Could Rely”
Often, when it comes to female ancestors, we have limited evidence to document their lives, especially as we move back in time. In the Southern United States, it was not the norm for women, including those of higher social status, to read and write from the colonial period into the 18th century.[1] As a result, we have few documents from that time frame written by Southern women recording details of their daily lives, how they viewed what was happening around them, and so on. Continue reading “Children of Dennis Lindsey (1794-1836) and Jane Brooks: Sarah Brooks Lindsey Speake (1818-1889)”→
Detail from G. Woolworth Colton’s 1855 map of Mississippi showing Van Buren, Itawbamba County — from Colton’s Atlas of the World (New York : J.H. Colton, 1855-56), at the Library of Congress website
Or, Subtitled: Westward Ho As Businesses Falter and New Opportunities Beckon
In my first posting tracking the life of John Wesley Lindsey, son of Dennis Lindsey and Jane Brooks, in Wayne County, Kentucky, and Lawrence County, Alabama, up to 1840, I noted that John had long puzzled me: I could track his life up to the point that he disappears from records of Itawamba and Lee County, Mississippi, around 1870, but after that, I couldn’t follow him. I couldn’t follow him until I realized that he was the J.W. Lindsay who married M.A. Wester in Red River Parish, Louisiana, on 15 December 1878, and that he and Mary Ann Nobles Wester then settled at Marthaville in Natchitoches Parish, where John died in 1903. The families of John’s siblings Mark Jefferson Lindsey, Margaret Lindsey Hunter, and Rebecca Lindsey Kellogg had all settled in Red River Parish, and John had evidently gone out to Louisiana to join them by 1878. Continue reading “Children of Dennis Lindsey (1794-1836) and Jane Brooks: John Wesley Lindsey (1814-1903) — Mississippi Years”→
John Wesley Lindsey’s signature as witness to will of his grandfather Thomas M. Brooks, 2 October 1838, Morgan County, Alabama (from loose-papers estate file of Thomas Brooks, Morgan County)
Or, Subtitled: Weathervane Turns on Fortunes of North Alabama Merchant Planters in 1830s
John Wesley Lindsey’s Birth in Wayne County, Kentucky, April 1814
21 October 1836 inventory of estate of Dennis Lindsey, from case file, Jane Lindsey v. John W. Lindsey and James B. Speake as administrators, Lawrence County, Alabama, loose court case files 247, box 171, folder 6 (1)
21 October 1836 inventory of estate of Dennis Lindsey, from case file, Jane Lindsey v. John W. Lindsey and James B. Speake as administrators, Lawrence County, Alabama, loose court case files 247, box 171, folder 6 (2)
Or, Subtitled: A North Alabama Example of Jarndyce v. Jarndyce
Dennis Lindsey’s Death
I have found no information about the cause of Dennis Lindsey’s death on 28 August 1836 at Oakville in Lawrence County, Alabama. Dennis was a young man not yet 42 years of age when he died. He left a young widow, Jane, who was 39, and eleven children, the first two of whom — John Wesley and Sarah Brooks Lindsey — were married. Several of Dennis and Jane’s children were very young when their father died: the last child, Dennis Edward, was not a year old, and the next four daughters — Margaret Tranquilla, Frances Rebecca, Martha Ann, and Mary Jane — were aged 2, 5, 7, and 10. As we’ll see from Dennis’s estate documents, though he had acquired a rather substantial estate, it was encumbered by debt, so in addition to having the responsibility to care for a large family of children when her husband died, Jane also had to face financial worries. Continue reading “The Children of Mark Lindsey (1774-1848) and Mary Jane Dinsmore: Dennis Lindsey (1794 – 1836) (4)”→
Begats and Bequeathals 