Earliest Proven Brooks Ancestor:

William Brooks

b. ca 1779-1781, North Carolina

m. Sarah Unknown

d. 1859, Cocke County, TN

 

Earliest Probable Brooks Ancestor:

Matthew Brooks

b. 1700-1708, Middlesex County, VA

m. Elizabeth Warren

d. 4 Mar 1755, Frederick County, VA

 

Summary

Hazel L. Brooks Corder b. 9 Mar 1923 d. 30 Mar 2010

For four decades I was fortunate to have enjoyed a close relationship with my Grandmother Hazel Brooks Corder, who shall henceforth be referred to using her "real" name: Granny. She filled my childhood with stories of her youth and fanciful tales passed down from her own Grandma Brooks (Ibbie Kennedy). She spoke of Brooks cousins with whom she'd grown up, and of Brooks and Stokely relatives still living on Tennessee's French Broad River.

 

Her parents, Claude and Esther Lawson Brooks, died when I was about six years old and I remember them quite well. I often visited their home on trips to Virginia with my grandparents, and I vividly recall sitting by the pond with my Great-Grandfather, tossing bread to the fish after having been shoo'ed outside by my frazzled Great-Grandmother. In what I now recognize as an attempt to briefly relieve his septugenarian wife of the company of an exhausting child, he took me for a walk up the mountain behind their house to the head of the small stream that fed the pond. I remember he wore a smart brown suit and fedora that day, and made his way through the brush with a cane or stick, although he didn't appear to need it and I don't ever remember him using it again. Funny what makes an impression on a child.

 

I can still mentally walk through their home in Dry Fork, stepping up onto the cold, slick, concrete slab of the enclosed porch, into the kitchen (painted a then-fashionable robin's egg blue), through the dining room (furnished in mahogany and beautifully patterned floral carpet) and into the living room which sported a large sofa and armchairs covered in burgundy velvet with a stiff pile. The feel of it under my fingers reminded me of my Great-Grandfather's close-cropped silver crew cut, which stood straight up on his head. He would sit in his chair by the fireplace and warn me not to go too near the hearth, for beneath it dwelt "Rawhead and Bloody Bones," that ancient and dreaded apparition who --oddly-- seemed to live in a surprising number of places adults deemed off-limits to children. In one of several bedrooms hung a painting of The Lone Wolf and I was afraid to sleep there, although I now have an identical painting hanging by my own bed. Their home seemed cavernous (and rather grand) to me and I can still remember most of it in suprising detail, making my way room by room as I close my eyes.

 

My Great-Grandmother, Esther, was a Lawson whose family was from Crab Orchard in Wise County, Virginia. Her ancestors were Scots. Although her own mother, Frances Davis (Lawson), died before Granny turned ten years old, Granny said she remembered going to visit her. She recalled the routine of children tumbling out of the car and Gr-Gr-Grandma Lawson on the porch, spreading her her arms wide and crying, "There's my babies!" as she gathered them in for hugs.

 

My Great-Grandfather Claude Brooks's family came from Del Rio in Cocke County, Tennessee, and prior to that, from a prolific line of Brookses of early Virginia, and North and South Carolina. Claude's father, Warren, had come to Wise County to build the railroads, and he met his future wife (the aforementioned Ibbie Kennedy) at the boarding house where she was waiting tables. (The two shared a tragedy in common -- their fathers had died during their infancies, leaving both families at hardship.) The story goes that Gr-Gr-Grandma Brooks artfully dropped her handkerchief and Gr-Gr-Grandpa Brooks chivalrously retrieved it for her, and...here we all are. Gr-Gr-Grandpa Brooks died the year my own Granny was born and she had no memory of him. (The same cannot be said for Gr-Gr-Grandma Brooks, who is writ large across the psyches of all her grandchildren and many of their descendants.)

My Great-Grandfather Claude Brooks started out working in the mines to support his own young family and as a result, he contracted a lung disease which required a long convalescence in the arid climate of New Mexico. Unable to continue work as a miner, he became an entrepreneur, and over his lifetime he had success with several of his enterprises, including ownership of a water company and a coal mine.

 

To learn more about the ancestry and histories of the Brooks and Lawson families and allied lines, begin browsing below.