Or, Subtitled: “A life-long Mason, a Methodist, and a staunch Jeffersonian democrat…he took little stock in national prohibition, nor in woman’s suffrage. He deplored ‘a short-haired woman’ or a ‘crowing hen!’”
The following posting continues my series about the children of James Brooks and Nancy Isbell of Wayne County, Kentucky, Warren County, Tennessee, and Lawrence County, Alabama. This posting focuses on their 11th child, Charles Wesley Brooks.
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:
Or, Subtitled: 17 Hedd Hogs, 1 Gray Horse, 1 Looking Glass, 1 Large Bible, etc.
In my last posting, I shared with you the information I have about the life of James Brooks, son of Thomas and Margaret Brooks of Frederick and Wythe Counties, Virginia, from his birth in Frederick County in 1772 to the death of his wife Nancy Isbell Brooks at Oakville in Lawrence County, Alabama, on 9 October 1835. I told you that James moved with his parents and siblings from Frederick to Wythe County, Virginia, in 1792, after James had come of age in Frederick County in 1789.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Or, Subtitled: Weathervane Turns on Fortunes of North Alabama Merchant Planters in 1830s
John Wesley Lindsey’s Birth in Wayne County, Kentucky, April 1814
In line with their strong Methodist commitments, Dennis Lindsey (1794-1836) and Jane Brooks named their first child (and eldest son) John Wesley, after the founder of Methodism. As we’ve seen, Dennis had a brother who also bore the name Wesley — Fielding Wesley Lindsey. Another brother, William Burke Lindsey, was named for the first Methodist circuit rider in Wayne County, Kentucky, at the time the Lindsey family lived there. John B. McFerrin, another Methodist circuit rider whom James Edmond Saunders mentions in connection with Mark and Dennis Lindsey in his Early Settlers of Alabama, as we’ve noted, provides abundant information about William Burke in his History of Methodism in Tennessee.[1] Continue reading “Children of Dennis Lindsey (1794-1836) and Jane Brooks: John Wesley Lindsey (1814-1903) — Wayne County, Kentucky, and Lawrence County, Alabama, Years”
Or, Subtitled: Legends of Witches, Native American Curses, and Drowned Towns
In this posting, I’ll discuss the records I’ve found tracking Dennis Lindsey from 1830 to his death in 1836. Almost all of these records are from Lawrence County, Alabama, where he had settled in 1817 when the area was still Madison County in Mississippi Territory. The following are records I’ve found for Dennis Lindsey from 1830 up to his death on 28 August 1836: Continue reading “The Children of Mark Lindsey (1774-1848) and Mary Jane Dinsmore: Dennis Lindsey (1794 – 1836) (3)”
Or, Subtitled: Alabama Fever and Skyrocketing Cotton Prices as Alabama Opened to White Settlers
By 9 September 1818, Dennis Lindsey had moved his family from Wayne County, Kentucky, to Lawrence County, Alabama, since he patented a piece of land on that date in township 7, range 6 west, section 8 at the Huntsville land office.[1] Alabama would become a state the following year, so this land was in Mississippi Territory when Dennis Lindsey patented it. As my previous posting showed, this land was adjacent (on the west) to what would become the town of Oakville in Lawrence County, a town that Dennis would play a role in founding. The fact that Dennis Lindsey disappears from Wayne County, Kentucky, tax returns after 1816 and then shows up acquiring land in Lawrence County, Alabama, in 1818 indicates, I think, that he moved his family to Alabama in 1817. The Huntsville Republican newspaper contains a notice on 14 October 1817 (p. 3, col. 4) that an unclaimed letter was waiting in the Huntsville post office for Dennis Lindsey, further evidence that he moved to Alabama in that year.
When James Edmond Saunders writes of Mark and Dennis Lindsey coming to Alabama in 1827,[2] it seems he had mistaken 1827 for 1817, though it was Dennis who came to Alabama in 1817. Mark and his wife Mary Jane actually moved to Alabama with Dennis’s younger siblings in 1819. Dennis’s move in 1817 would have been a step to prepare for the resettling of his parents and siblings two years later. Continue reading “The Children of Mark Lindsey (1774-1848) and Mary Jane Dinsmore: Dennis Lindsey (1794 – 1836) (2)”
Begats and Bequeathals 