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| Notes for Warren BROOKS Sr. R1a | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| It is said that nine of Warren Sr. and Sally's children went West. One son, David, stayled in Del Rio.5 1837-1839 Warren and Wright Brooks shop at Rankin and Pulliam Re: Cocke County Merchants "...The earliest stores [in Cocke County] were those of Rankin and Pulliam, WC Roadman, DA Mims, BD Jones & Son, JS & DG Allen, and others...The Journal of Rankin and Pulliam is a business ledger of 560 pages kept from May 15, 1837 to January 8, 1839...From these records, one can easily form an idea of the character of the buying habits of certain citizens...Frequent customers were Wright and Warren Brooks..."165 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Along Winding Brooks Newport, Tennessee, is a little town nestled amongst blue mountains and lakes in the eastern part of that state. The little town doesn't look like it has changed much in the last fifty years. The chourthouse isn't standing anymore; it burned for the first time in 1876, and again in the 20th century. A wealth of information was lost, and my grandmmother and I were crestfallen to have apparently driven two hours for nothing on our quest to search out the Brooks roots. We went to the newspaper office and asked to see a historian, hoping since Newport was the home of the Stokely Family (of cannery fame) there would be some thread of information to follow. "Daddy always said his grandmother was a Stokely!" said Granny, "And he ought to know." We were directed to the Stokely Memorial Library, a one-room treasure trove of history on the Stokely Family and related lines. And there, in a yellowed folder, handwritten long ago was a scribbly notation: "Children of Warren and Sarah Stokely Brooks:..." and amongst them was the name I was looking for, Warren Brooks, Jr. There was no proof of marriage, it having long since gone up in smoke in one of the courthouse fires. But after looking further, I found many references to the union of Warren and "Sally". From what I can gather, they must have married around 1833. Family tradition says that the Brooks's moved to Tennesse to be with relatives. Warren and Wright Brooks (brothers) names appeared frequently on a local merchant's ledgers, and there were other Brooks's native to Cocke County TN with similar names (although I have not been able to definitively connect our Brooks family with the others in the area). It's not known how Warren and Sarah met, or when. Sarah Stokely was the daughter of Royal Stokely and Jennie Huff, who's mother was a Corder [see Edward Corder, Sr. line]. Jennie was of Dutch (Huff) and English (Corder) ancestry, although doubt has arisen on whether the Huff family was indeed from Holland). She had been scalped as a child, but had survived; her younger brother did not survive his tomahawking. Royal Stokely was the son of Jehu Stokely of England or Wales, and Nancy O'Neal (Neal?), presumably of Ireland although our earliest records of her are in Charleston, SC. Jehu was a Revolutionary War Veteran. Read more about them by following the ancestral links of Sarah Stokely Brooks. Warren and Sarah Stokely Brooks established a farm on the banks of the French Broad River where they brought up eleven children. Their youngest, Warren Dugan Brooks, was born August 8th, 1859, nearly thirty years after their marriage. It was in November of 1859 that tragedy struck the Brooks family. The 1859 Mortality Schedule of Cocke County we find listed: Warren Brooks, age 49, of South Carolina, "died six days after having his skull fractured in an affray." There was no elaboration in the records and the nature of the affray puzzled me. Some time later I questioned my aunt Elizabeth Brooks Blevins, Warren Sr.'s grand-daughter, who was 92 at the time. She remembered, "Oh yes! Grandpa was in town and there was these two men having a fight out on the street and one of them wasn't fighting fair. He had a rock and he was hitting the other man on the head with it. Grandpa stepped in and said, 'Here now, let's not have this...' and such things as a man would say. And the one with the rock picked it up and hit Grandpa on the head with it, and he died." [Elizabeth Brooks Blevins, Sept 9, 1989] Interestingly, in a book by Wilma Dykeman about the French Broad River, I found what I believe to be an account of the same fight: INSERT ACCOUNT OF FIGHT. Apparently this intervention on behalf of Huff was considered unethical, but considering the circumstances, by today's standards the actions of the cheater with the rock would have been considered unethical, and our ancestor's actions would have been considered quite appropriate. Regardless of right or wrong, the eleven Brooks children lost a father. Our own ancestor, his youngest son and namesake, never had a chance to know him. Excerpted from "Muleskinner, The Life, Times and History of R.P." by Kristy Frame Ray [Note: The narrative is from the perspective of R. P. Brooks, Ms. Ray's grandfather. (LKH)]:166 "My great grandfather Warren Brooks, Sr. was born in South Carolina, in 1812, probably the son of William and Sarah Brooks. William and Sarah married in 1803 -- 189 years ago. They may have married in South Carolina, or possibly in William's home state, North Carolina, before moving south. Warren had at least four brothers also born in South Carolina: George, born in 1804, Wright in 1814, David in 1817, and Young in 1822. He also had a sister, Judy, who was born in 1811. Also, according to what records we can find, William and Sarah probably lost four children when they were very young, three boys and a girl. William and Sarah brought their children into the world during a time that would fill chapters in our history books. The famous explorers, Lewis and Clark, began and completed their expedition up the Missouri River. Abraham Lincoln was growing up in Illinois. Thomas Jefferson turned the presidency over to his friend James Madison, and the unpopular war - "The Second War of Independence" began the year Warren was born. Americans fought for almost three years and accomplished nothing except the fall of Napoleon, the burning of the White House and the writing of a famous song, "The Defense of Fort McHenry," which later became "The Star-Spangled Banner." Back in South Carolina, sometime before 1830,Warren's parents must have been feeling crowded, or adventurous, and decided to move their young family over the Appalachian Mountains to the vast lands of Tennessee. Perhaps they travelled on horseback by way of the French Broad Trail, or through Boone's Gap, or maybe they made their way on a flat boat on the French Broad River. Whatever the means, the Brooks' settled in Tennessee by 1830. They had one child, William, that same year in Tennessee, and another, James, in 1833. The family soon made friends in their new home. The Burnettes, Burkes, Huffs, and Stokely's were among their new neighbors. Warren took a particular interest in Royal and Jane Stokely's daughter, Sarah. Warren and Sarah married about 1833, probably in Cocke County. They soon settled down to raise a family of eleven children. The first child, Royal was born in 1834. Maria Jane, named after her grandmother was born in 1836, Nathan, my grandfather in 1838, and Mary Susan in 1839. In teh 1840's the family continued to grow with Stephen in 1841, David in 1844, Rhoda in 1846, and Sarah in 1849...The next child, Judy, didn't come along until 1853. William followed Judy in 1856, and Warren Jr., who took his father's name, in 1859. His father would die just three short months later. Warren and his brothers and sisters grew, married, and settled in Cocke County to raise famiilies of their own. Most of the Brooks' lived near Warren and his family including their parents, William and Sarah. In 1850 there are eleven Brooks households in Cocke County related to Warren. One of these is Matthew's family. Matthew was a few years younger than father William, and is probably William's brother. The Brooks' were probably farmers, as were most Cocke County residents at that time. They lived in the north part of the County, not far from Newport. The Brooks families, as well as many of their relatives and neighbors did some of their shopping at Rankin and Pulliam, merchants. Part of the ledger fromthis store is in the book "Over the Misty Blue Hills." The ledger shows that in the 1830's you could buy coffee and cotton for $1 as William Kelly did, or a thimble for six cents as Mark Brooks did, or even powder and lead for 33 & 1/2 cents as David Brooks did for his father, Matthew. Royal Stokely paid $4 for 2 bales of spun cotton the same day his neighbor, James Burke, bought a hat for $5...Customers could buy anything from saddlebags to ribbon and gunpowder to sugar from Mr. Rankin and Mr. Pulliam. ...This was the early 1800s. Horses, wagons, and steamboats were the modes of transportation -- and hazardous at best. Steam engines were just beginning to pull trains over the sparse tracks, and the only way to communicate with teh family you had left behind was by letters carried through the wilderness on horseback. A fireplace was a necessity, not a luxury. They used the fire to keep warm and to cook. They cooked the food in a big pot hung over the fire, or on an iron stove placed over it. Doing the wash was a full day affair. They beat the long dresses and coarse pants over rocks or rubbed them on washboards in a tub with water brought up from a nearby stream. Tehn they hung them oin the loine to dry. Next they ironed those yards and yards of cotton with flat irons heated over the fire. Mr. Rankin and Mr. Pulliman sold quite a variety of goods, but store-bought goods were expensive. They family money was saved to buy what they could not make -- like sugar and thimbles. My ancestors could, and did, make just about everything they needed. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Last Modified 20 Aug 2006 | Created 8 Feb 2007 Laura K. Henderson |
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