Once more, from the Beginning

AuthorHouse

Contents

Dedication..........................................................5Preface.............................................................9Thomas Brooks.......................................................14Thomas Brooks Jr....................................................15Thomas Brooks III...................................................19Thomas Brooks IV....................................................22William Brooks......................................................23William Marion Brooks...............................................24Benjamin O. Brooks..................................................26James H. Brooks.....................................................27William Fletcher Brooks.............................................33Topographical Information...........................................38Warrick County Family Records.......................................42Gilbert W. Brooks...................................................48Helen D. (Smith) Brooks.............................................53Gilbert W. Brooks – Detailed History..........................63Gilbert and Helen – Marriage..................................811940 – 1945...................................................851946 – 1950...................................................911951 – 1953...................................................1251954 – 1957...................................................1591958 – 1961...................................................1951962 – 1965...................................................2491966 – 1969...................................................2711970 – 1989...................................................2901990 – 1999...................................................3252000 – 2009...................................................337Part VII Sibling Biographies........................................341Judith A Brooks.....................................................344Linda T. Brooks.....................................................348Joan D. Brooks......................................................350James W. Brooks.....................................................353Brenda J. Brooks....................................................355Thomas D. Brooks....................................................356Carol E. Brooks.....................................................359Karen K. Brooks.....................................................360Part VIII The Future................................................363Part IX Summation...................................................371Part X GENERATIONS FOLLOWING US.....................................375To our Young Women..................................................382To our Young Men....................................................385Owen / Hart Township Maps 1880 & 1899...............................392 - 395

Chapter One

Family Ancestry from 1710 - 1908

I want readers to be able to easily identify the chain of our paternal family members. For that purpose, I have emboldened and italicized this text's first mention of the names of our family's succeeding bloodline.

Thomas Brooks Sr. was reportedly born in 1710, likely in Burlington, New Jersey. Quakers incorporated Burlington – the county seat of Burlington County – on October 24, 1693. So it is highly likely that Thomas Brooks Sr. was a Quaker. Burlington sits 15 miles northeast of Philadelphia, on the Delaware River.

The Indians by that time were resisting white settlers along the Eastern Seaboard. During Thomas's early life, hostilities occurred between Native Americans and settlers in the Carolina territory just to the south. Following a massacre of settler families in that area, the Tuscarora Indian War began. It lasted from the fall 1711 to February 1715. During that conflict, in May 1712, the Province of Carolina was officially divided into North Carolina and South Carolina.

The Pennsylvania Assembly had just banned the import of slaves into that colony. Philadelphia became the central meeting place for all the territories. It was in 1714, tea was first introduced into the American Colonies and King George I had ascended to the English throne, succeeding Queen Anne.

No other information is available on Thomas Sr. other than that he was the father of - Thomas Brooks Jr.

Thomas Brooks Jr.

Thomas Brooks Jr. was born in 1730 in Southampton, New Jersey. The next year, Benjamin Franklin founded the first American public library in Philadelphia. Thomas Jr. married Mary Blacknall, born in 1732 in Burlington, New Jersey.

Thomas Jr. and his young wife married in spring 1747. They left home shortly thereafter, travelling through Baltimore on their way to Winchester, Virginia. (Baltimore was founded in 1730 in the Maryland colony.) The move from New Jersey to Winchester, Fredrick County Virginia is about 180 miles southwest of Burlington, New Jersey.

During the late 1720s, the Governor of the Virginia territory offered 200,000 acres to families willing to settle in the Shenandoah Valley. The town of Winchester was laid out in half-acre lots in 1741. A good reason for Thomas and Mary's move to Fredrick County could have been the offer of land grants.

George Washington was born two years after Thomas Jr., on February 22, 1732. They lived in adjoining counties in Virginia during their young adult years.

Thomas and Mary had one recorded child, a son. Thomas Brooks III who was born in 1747 in Winchester. When we do the math, Thomas Jr. became a parent at 17 and Mary at 15. One wonders if their parents and Thomas Sr. may have encouraged them to move to the new lands due to the pregnancy. Perhaps their families also had friends there who could help with a new start that would be better for the young couple.

In June 1732, Georgia became the 13th English colony. Benjamin Franklin, still in Philadelphia, published Poor Richard's Almanac. This publication contained weather predictions, humor, proverbs, and epigrams. It sold nearly 10,000 copies each year from 1732 to 1757.

The English Parliament passed the Molasses Act, a not-so-sweet deal, in 1733. This was done to protect the English planters in the Caribbean from French and Dutch competition. It imposed heavy duties on molasses, rum and sugar imported from non-British islands in the Caribbean.

England declared war on Spain in 1739. As a result, hostilities broke out in America between Florida's Spaniards and the colonists in Georgia and South Carolina. That same year, three separate violent uprisings by black slaves occurred in South Carolina. In 1740, fifty black slaves were hung in Charleston, South Carolina after plans for another revolt were revealed.

Other historical events during Thomas Jr's life included the English Parliament passing the Iron Act in 1750 and the Currency Act in 1764. The former limited the growth of the iron industry in the American colonies to protect the English iron industry. The Currency Act prohibited the issuing of paper money by the New England colonies.

The French and Indian War erupted in 1754 as a result of disputes over land in the upper Ohio River Valley. In May, the then 22-year-old George Washington led a small group of American colonists to victory over the French. He then built Fort Necessity in the Ohio...