More on the Brooks Brothers and Daniel Boone

I didn't have as much time at the Warren County Heritage Society today as I'd have liked, so I didn't get to really dig into a book on Daniel Boone that I found found a few minutes before I had to leave. There were references to the scrappy Brooks brothers, though, and I learned that Thomas Brooks married Daniel's niece, Sarah Boone. According to the author of the genealogy, Thomas, William and Samuel were natives of Fauquier County, VA. A quick search online when I returned home seems to indicate that these three Brookses were descendants of a Peter Brooks, although at least one researcher says there is no proof of them having come from Fauquier.

Three Brooks Brothers were involved in the adventures of Blue Licks, KY with Daniel Boone

I continue to plug along through my Brooks Genbox, reading and sifting. One of the interesting leads found by Carol Redd deals with three Brooks brothers who were part of Daniel Boone's party. Although we don't know if these Books belong to the R1a line or not, it's still an interesting story and character sketch. Carol's family has an oral tradition of her Brookses having some association with Daniel Boone.

In 1782 a list of salt makers captured by indians at The Blue Licks (in Kentucky) includes a William Brooks and Samuel Brooks. A Thomas Brooks (Boone's scout and brother to William and Samuel) was not captured. William was ransomed to the British at Detroit along with many others captured at the same time, but Samuel died in captivity.

John Mack Faragher's book on Daniel Boone includes the following intriguing passage: "Communications between settlements depended on the scouts Thomas Brooks and Simon Kenton at Boonesborough, both men in their early twenties but hardened to life on the border, 'men with the bark on,' as people then put it. Brooks, who later married a Boone woman, was one of three equally irascible brothers. He so loved a fight, it was said, that after going a spell without one, he offered a big stranger a guinea to go a round or two in a local tavern. The man accepted and proceeded to beat him up badly; Brooks left the tavern hurting but happy."

Google Books allows you to search and read from this book.

20090629 Brooks Family Timeline (Excel Document)

This is a link to an Excel spreadsheet of my working timeline for this family. The file includes tabs for unidentified individual's records and limited entries of lines or individuals known to be unrelated to ours (to help distinguish from our own entries). This is an ongoing work in progress. Please feel free to download this file or share the link, but I request that you not share or re-post the actual Excel file since it is updated frequently. Please subscribe to this blog to be notified of updates.

Brooks Family Timeline.xls

Sifting through a backlog from the R1a Brooks Family DNA discussion list.

Well, I'm making progress, at last.  From 277 messages in my Brooks Genbox (Genealogy Inbox), I'm down by a whopping twelve messages to 265.  Now that's what I call progress.  It's not enough just to read the messages -- no, no -- there is information to be gleaned from each and every one.  One message contains a link to a site from which I spend four hours transcribing notes.  Another announces that a member has posted an abstract of Brookses from Oglethorpe County, GA...but wait, look at all of his other files that look intriguing as well!  This could take days.  Months.  Perhaps years, conservatively speaking.

I find that I'm nearly six months behind the others in the group -- a group of which I am, embarrassingly, the moderator -- and as I plow through the sheer volume of information, I worry that I will ask (or answer) questions that have already been addressed in the intervening 265 messages.  I hope everyone will bear with me as I play catchup.