Our Brooks story begins in Manchester, England, with the baptism of Thomas Brooks and the marriage of Thomas and Grace Cunliffe in the Manchester Cathedral in the late 1500’s, traverses Massachusetts, and ends with Lucinda Brooks in Woodstock, Maine, in the 1800’s. Indeed, we have many stories in this family.
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| Rindge NH - Ashburnham, MA - Harvard - Acton - Concord - Lincoln |
Captain Thomas Brooks (1594-1667)
9th GGPs Capt. Thomas Brooks and Grace were married in the 15th c. Gothic Manchester Cathedral in England in 1617. They immigrated about 1631 to Saltonstall Plantation, known today as Watertown, Massachusetts, just outside Charlestown, now Boston. Thomas was granted 20 acres of land and took the oath of freeman in Watertown in 1636. When the area of Concord was purchased from the Indians the same year, Thomas moved the family again, this time into the frontier about 12 miles northwest of Watertown and 20 miles northwest of Boston.
Thomas was among the first settlers in Concord where he acquired substantial land, took part in the important Indian fur trade, and was a blacksmith by trade. He and a son-in-law bought 400 acres in Medford among other land acquisitions. He was Captain of a Concord “trainband” company, a local militia for defense of the town.
Along with the fur business, Thomas was appointed by the county of Middlesex “to sell wine of any sort and strong liquors to the Indians, as to their judgments shall seem most meet and necessary.” He was forbidden to give to any one Indian more than a pint of liquor at a time.
When Concord was divided into three “quarters” in 1654, Thomas had lands in both the South and East quarters.
Thomas and Grace had at least four children who grew to adulthood in Concord. Two of the children, Mary (1623) and Joshua (c. 1630), were born in England; another two, Caleb (c. 1632) and Gershom (c. 1634), were born in Watertown.
Grace died in 1664 and Thomas in 1667. Their burial site is unknown, but may be in the Old Hill Burying Ground where many of the original settlers of Concord were buried.
Deacon Joshua Brooks (c. 1630-before 1697)
At age 23, 8th GGF Joshua Brooks married 16 year-old Hannah Mason (1636-1695) from Watertown, Massachusetts. Joshua may have learned his tanner trade from his father-in-law, Captain Hugh Mason. As Thomas Brooks’ eldest son, Joshua had the benefit of receiving twice more of his father’s estate than his two brothers and brother-in-law, Thomas Wheeler. He was admitted as a freeman of Concord in 1652.
Hannah’s father, our 9th GGF Captain Hugh Mason (1605-1678), immigrated from Maldon, Essex, England, on the ship Francis in 1634 to become one of Watertown’s first settlers. He was a tanner by trade and a Captain of a volunteer foot company “for the purpose of reducing the Dutch at the Monhatoes unto obedience to the English Crown.” He is noted to be a man of fortitude as, at age 70, he led his company against attacking Indians “driving the enemy back to the western side of the river,” during King Phillip’s War. Hugh and his wife are buried in Watertown’s Arlington St. Cemetery.
As Captain in the Concord town militia, Joshua would have been involved in King Phillip’s War (1675-1676). A massacre at Concord Village occurred in 1675 when a band of Indian warriors raided Concord Village (now Littleton), killed two men and captured a girl. In retaliation, British militia rounded up a peaceful band of “praying” Indians living on the outskirts of Concord who had converted to Christianity, took the whole lot to Boston and locked them in a workhouse.
Hannah and Joshua had 11 children born in Concord.
At some point, Joshua and son-in-law Samuel Dakin joined the First Church in Dorchester, MA, some 30 miles distant from Concord. He deeded his Concord lands to his sons in 1695 and joined a small group of Puritan missionaries who journeyed to South Carolina the following year to set up a new town on the Ashley River, also named Dorchester. Missionary conversion may have been the prime purpose in the project, but the settlement also engaged in shipping deer skins and rice back to Boston. Indeed, the fur/skin trade may be what lured Joshua to the area. Unfortunately, Joshua died soon after undertaking this risky venture, either in South Carolina or aboard ship on the way back to Massachusetts. The British occupied the fort at Dorchester during the Revolution, then burnt it to the ground when they left in 1781. All that remains of Dorchester today is the old church tower, cemetery, and walls of the fort maintained by South Carolina as a state park.
Hannah died some time after 1695 when she participated in the transfer of Joshua’s property transfer to his sons before he left for South Carolina. Joshua’s death occurred sometime before August 1697 when his estate was probated in Concord.
Ensign Daniel Brooks (1663-1733)
7th GGF Daniel Brooks was the third of Joshua’s seven sons and a beneficiary of his father’s deeded land before Joshua headed to South Carolina. Joshua married Anna Cooper Merriam in Concord in 1692. Anna’s parents were John Meriam and Mary Cooper.
Our Meriam immigrant was Joseph, a clothier in Kent, England, who came to Charlestown (Boston) in 1638 and was among the first group of settlers in Concord the same year. He died within two years, and son John was born after his death. John married Mary Cooper, daughter of John Cooper and Anna Sparhawk of Boston who are also our 9th GGPs through a different line. That is, daughters of John and Anna were grandparent ancestors of Harriet Gove Wilkins and Joseph Nute, our great-grandparents. As such, Harriet and Joseph were distant cousins and likely had no idea. The Sparhawk house is still standing in Boston. Three of John and Mary’s offspring married into the Concord Brooks family. The American Revolution started on Meriam property on April 19, 1775 at “Meriam’s Corner,” now part of the Minute Men's Historical National Park.
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| North Bridge at Minute Men National Park, Concord |
Daniel was a yeoman, i.e. he held a small landed estate in Concord, and an ensign in the Concord trainband. His home was on Brooks Road which is now part of nearby Lincoln. He and Anna had six children. Daniel died in 1733 at age 69 and Anna in 1757 at age 87. They are buried in the Concord Old Burying Hill cemetery
Deacon John Brooks (1701-1777)
6th GGF John Brooks was the youngest of Daniel and Anna’s six children. John married Lydia Barker (1711-1802) in Concord in 1728 and they had a succession of 10 children over the next 18 years - nine sons and one daughter. They lost one son, Jonas, at age three years.
The Brooks family had acquired land throughout the Concord, Watertown, and Medford communities over the previous three generations and most Brooks living in these areas in the 18th century are descendants of Joshua. Our line remained in that section of Concord which was set off to form Acton in 1735. John was active in Acton town meetings and a deacon of the first Meetinghouse in Acton built in 1736.
John and his family were committed to the colonists’ side in the Revolutionary War. In 1772, he was on a committee to consider the “state of the rights of colonists and the violation of these rights and to report a draft of such votes as they shall think proper.” In other words, the town’s unhappiness with the British was preparing for a Revolution.
Several of John’s and Lydia’s sons and grandsons fought in the Revolution. Two sons, Ephraim and our 5th GGF, became doctors. For reasons that are unclear, five sons relocated to the Worcester, MA, area some 30 miles away, possibly due to family land holdings but also due to running out of land for the multitude of male descendants.
John died in 1777 leaving Lydia widowed for 25 years. Lydia, though, had her sister, Dorothy, and the death notice for both remarked “Sisters, through a long life, they were lovely and pleasant to each other, to their numerous descendants and friends, and in their death they were not divided.” Lydia and Dorothy died within 10 days of each other at the ages of 91 and 92, respectively. John, Lydia and Dorothy are buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in Acton.
Peter Brooks, MD (1745-c. 1800)
5th GGF Peter Brooks was the 9th of John and Lydia’s children. The child before Peter died just before his third birthday when Peter was not yet a year old himself, but was replaced with a brother of the same name in the following year. He also lost a sister when he was ten years old.
A strong influence in Peter’s life was probably Reverend John Swift, minister of the Acton church who undertook the education of Acton's boys for college preparation. The Reverend’s son was a Harvard graduate, Peter’s peer, and Acton's first physician. Both Peter and his brother, Ephraim, entered the medical profession and both were probably prepared by Reverend Swift. Peter named one of his own sons John Swift Brooks.
Twenty-year-old Peter received his medical training in 1765 in London where he published a treatise on midwifery. He practiced at the Hôtel-Dieu in Paris where Libby’s notes indicate he treated pregnant women and dissected dead women and fetuses.
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Hôtel-Dieu de Paris to the left of Notre Dame Cathedral
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The Hôtel-Dieu de Paris founded in 651 is located next to Notre-Dame on the Île de la Cité. Its history in the mid-1700’s shows a high mortality rate, that up to three patients shared one hospital bed - 1200 beds for 3500 patients - and little effort was made to separate contagious diseases. The hospital continued to operate as a top casualty and research center until closing in 2013 after more than 1400 years of operation. The historic hospital now operates as a mediocre hotel.
Peter returned to the colonies by 1769 when he married Judith Foster of Ashburnham, Massachusetts. The Foster family lived in Harvard, Massachusetts, just next to Acton for about 10 years before moving to Ashburnham in 1753 and, as such, may have been acquainted with the Brooks family.
Peter and Judith settled in Ashburnham and had nine children over the next 18 years. Two died in infancy, including the John Swift Brooks child. They lived on “the old Winchedon Road between the Common and the David Russell farm,” according to History of Ashburnham, possibly located on present day Lake Road, 6.5 miles from Swan Point Road, Rindge, NH.
History of Ashburnham published in 1887 also recounts Peter was the first physician of Ashburnham, and “during the greater part of his practice here he had no competitor. . . About 1792 he left town and nothing is known of his subsequent history. His family remained permanently and his descendants in this town have been numerous.” Is it possible the town didn’t learn of Peter’s indiscretion and elopement to Maine?
Peter’s last child with Judith was Dickerson Brooks, born October 1787. Earlier that year in May, an out-of-wedlock son, Gideon Swan, fathered by Peter, was born to 27 year-old Lucy Swan six miles away in Rindge, NH. Thus, Peter had two children born the same year from two different women. Whether he elected to abandon his wife and seven children or was “asked” to leave won’t be known.
Likewise, we don’t know whether Peter divorced Judith at any point. Jurisdiction over divorce cases belonged to the Supreme Judicial Court between 1786-1796 and those records are in the Suffolk Files collection, recorded in the SJC record books available on microfilm in the Massachusetts Archives reading room.
Back to our story, Lucy’s father, William Swan (1737-1815) from Bolton, MA, is our 5th GGF through Lucy’s sister Emma Swan who married our Captain Samuel Stephens of Woodstock. According to a report in Libby’s Notes by Peter’s son, Charles, “the cause of Dr. Brooks leaving his family, he says may be of the incident of his doctoring Lucy Swan, by whom she had a son, Gideon. This Gideon was born about 1787.” The mystery is how Lucy Swan from Bolton, MA, some 35 miles distant from Ashburnham, became acquainted with or doctored by Dr. Peter.
William Swan, wife Lucy Robbins, and all but one of their seven children, including the younger Lucy, and young Gideon moved to Paris, Maine, by 1790 when William appears on the census. Gideon was raised in the Swan household; record of his mother’s marrying or her death is not evident. The Swan family, including Gideon, moved to Woodstock in 1802. Gideon became a land owner, served in the War of 1812, and was the last survivor of the Woodstock pioneers.
What happened to Peter?
Peter left Ashburnham, a wife with seven children, and 20 years of medical practice to head to Maine. Our next record of Peter is his marriage to our 5th GGM Betsey Bryant in New Gloucester, Maine in July 1788, 14 months after the birth of Gideon (May 1787) and nine months after the birth of wife Judith’s last child (Oct 1787).
Available information indicates that Peter arrived in Paris, Maine, with the William Swan (remember - father of Lucy, grandfather of Gideon?) and Solomon Bryant families in 1788. The Bryant family had come up to Paris from Grey, Maine, but whether there was a Brooks-Swan-Bryant connection before Paris is unclear. In any event, Peter soon married not Lucy, but 19 year-old Betsey Bryant in New Gloucester, abandoning yet another family, Lucy Swan and young infant Gideon. It was common for Paris inhabitants to marry in neighboring New Gloucester. Betsey and 43 year-old Peter were married in July 1788 and our 4th GGM, Lucinda Oraing Brooks, was born five months later in December 1788. It would be a reasonable assumption that Peter was not divorced from his wife at the time of his marriage to Betsey.
By 1792, Peter and Betsey settled in Bakersfield Plantation, now known as Poland, Maine, where he purchased 25 acres and built the first framed house on Pigeon Hill, part of Mechanic Falls. Over their 12 years of marriage, Betsey bore Peter three more children after Lucinda. They moved briefly to Woodstock, then to nearby Greenwood, but returned to Pigeon Hill by 1798 when he was on the tax list for Poland.
Peter continued to practice medicine in Maine, but according to History of Woodstock he was a “root and herb doctor,” preferring plant medicines over drugs as he found them far superior. History of Poland notes he was an “Indian doctor and his services were highly appreciated in those days.” Dr. Peter rode circuit on horseback through Gray, New Gloucester, McFalls, Oxford, Norway, Paris, Minot, Woodstock, Bryant Pond and on to Bethel administering to his patients.
History of Poland recounts Peter used large amounts of rattle snake oil obtained on Rattlesnake Mountain in what is now Raymond, Maine. An April 2018 Smithsonian Magazine article detailed the historical full circle of medicinal uses for snake oil. Native Americans used snake oil as a salve for rheumatic pain. An 1833 Physician’s Assistant recommended using snake oil for painful sores and chilblains, a swelling of the extremities. Recent scientific studies suggest that snake oil may indeed have medicinal properties and that it contains omega-3-fatty acids. Unfortunately, a snake oil salesman in the early 20th century, Clark Stanley, opened a snake oil factory producing a product that was 99% mineral oil mixed with beef fat, camphor and turpentine, giving snake oil its bad reputation.
Local information attributes Dr. Peter’s demise to poison inhaled from the poison teeth of rattle snakes. His death is not recorded, with various sources giving 1800, 1803 or 1804, up to 1808. The last located record is a deed from Jacob Strout to Peter Brooks for 25 acres in Poland, dated November 1800. Betsey remarried in 1804 at age 35, so we know Peter had died by that date.
Dr. Peter's medical knowledge was published posthumously from his manuscript in a 183-page book, The Physician's Assistant : consisting of a short and comprehensive Materia Medica, together with a summary view of the whole practice of physic, surgery and midwifery / by the celebrated Dr. Brooks. One hundred copies were published; an original book is located in Maine Historical Society, another in the Surgeon General's library, and a reprint at Woodstock Historical Society. A digital copy is online or at Archives.org. Peter's book appears to be the above 1833 source for the Smithsonian magazine's statement for using snake oil for sores and chilblains.
Was our Peter Brooks a Revolution patriot?
Could Peter have returned to his family home to join with the rest of his Revolutionary family in Acton after the “skirmish” in Concord and Lexington that set off the Revolution?
Three Peter Brooks are named in Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors in the Revolutionary War, Vol II, including a Peter Brooks "who enlisted in the Continental Army from Middlesex County (year not given), residence, Acton; enlisted for town of Acton," without any further identifying information. His death occurred before Revolution pensions were granted which could have cleared up this mystery. Still, could this have been our Peter?
Evidence this may be our Peter Brooks:
- He would have been an acceptable age for enlistment.
- There is a break in children’s births between 1774 and 1777.
- Numerous brothers and nephews in Concord, Acton and surrounding areas were involved in the Revolution.
- The nearby Concord/Lexington events of April 19, 1775 might have ignited a desire to take part in the Revolution.
- He seems to have an adventurous, risk taking streak.
- He is not mentioned in any of the histories of Ashburnham, Acton, Concord, Poland, Paris, or Woodstock as connected to the Revolution, and all these have sections on their men in the Revolution. History of Acton, however, admits that many of those from the town who fought were not recorded.
- Why wouldn’t he enlist in Ashburnham militia? Why go 30 miles away to Acton to enlist?
Lucinda Oraing Brooks (1788-1839)
Our 4th GGM, Lucinda Brooks, was the 11th child born to Peter Brooks and the first child for her mother, Betsey Bryant. Lucinda presumably spent most of her childhood at the Pigeon Hill farm although the family seemed to move around. She would have been about 12 years old when her father died. Her mother, Betsey, remarried to Jonathan Fickett in 1804 when Lucinda was 16 years old, and had another two children. Her step-father, Jonathan Fickett, is our 4th GGF through his first marriage to Judith Cox, and their daughter Betsey Fickett married 3rd GGF Samuel Nute.
Lucinda married farmer Aaron Davis, Jr., by 1809 when their first child was born and they had a sizable family of 11 children. Aaron was a solider in the War of 1812.
Lucinda died in 1839 at age 50, and Aaron lived on to age 83. Lucinda and Aaron have headstones in the Nute Cemetery in Woodstock.
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| Gravestones of Lucinda Brooks and Aaron Davis, Jr, Nute-Stevens Cemetery, Woodstock |
Sources
The Tail of an American Hoax: The Hisstory of Snake Oil has Come Full Circle, Smithsonian Magazine, Apr 2018.
The physician's assistant: consisting of a short and comprehensive materia medica, together with a summary view of the whole practice of physic, surgery and midwifery, Dr. Peter Brooks, 1833.
History of Poland, HA & GW Poole, 1896.
History of Ashburnham, Ezra Stearns, 1887.
History of Paris, ME, WB Lapham, 1884.
History of Woodstock, ME, WB Lapham, 1882.
Tributaries: Genealogies of the Brooks Families of New England, www.tributaries.info
Notes of Beth Emerson, Woodstock resident and descendant of Peter Brooks, who accessed Libby’s Notes in Woodstock library. Mr. Libby was a storekeeper who recorded notes on conversations he had with customers over the years, and these have been preserved in Woodstock Public Library.
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