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Wilkes March 21, 2025 Tracing the Family of
Stokes and Young Brooks For decades,
Brooks descendants in Wilkes and Alleghany Counties have shared the story
that Stokes and Young Brooks were half brothers, and that their mother was
Rebecca Brooks who never married. She
named her boys after their fathers: a
Mr. Stokes and a Mr. Young. Rebecca is
said to have come to Wilkes County from Virginia, living to the age of
99. It’s surprising, then, that there
is no written record of a Rebecca Brooks in Wilkes County who is the right
age to be the mother of Stokes and Young.
Her name isn’t in a census, a tax list, a deed, or a court
record. It’s as if she never existed! The families
of Stokes and Young are presented in the book “Log
Cabin Families of Stone Mountain, NC”, by Hardin and Virginia Royall. From that book and later census records, we
know that Stokes Brooks was born in 1802, and Young Brooks was born in
1805. Some -- but not all -- census
records show them being born in Virginia.
The 1914 death certificate of Stokes Brooks’ daughter Permelia says
that her father was born in Halifax County, Virginia. Those have been the only clues that we had
to work with to learn more about the ancestry of Stokes and Young Brooks...
until now! Several
events have come together to reveal more about this family. 1) For
the past three years I’ve made periodic visits to the State Archives in
Raleigh to research criminal court documents that have never been indexed or
microfilmed. As far as I know, the
only place to discover the stories held in these records is to go through
them one page at a time. And they have
revealed lots of stories! Even finding
a name on a witness list can be enough to place someone in the right place at
the right time. 2) DNA
testing is an amazing tool to have in the genealogy toolbox. When there is no paper trail to answer a
question, there’s a good chance that DNA will open up new possibilities. If you have a roadblock in your family
tree, spend $50 or so and see if DNA gives you new avenues to explore. If you have questions about what to do, ask
me! 3) For
more than ten years, I’ve been mapping Wilkes County land grants. To most people, it’s not immediately clear
how mapping deeds can lead to discoveries in your family tree, but imagine
how different life was 200 years ago.
Family members often lived next to each other, and they often married
their neighbors. This is referred to
as the FAN Club: Friends, Associates,
and Neighbors. 4) Specifically
for this project, I received an email from Joe Holloway that referenced a
bastardy case in the Halifax County, Virginia, court records . In fairness, he sent the email over a year
ago, but only recently did it click into place. This was an exciting discovery! I have to
start with the Halifax County court case, but first the back story. In 2022, I started corresponding with Joe
Holloway who managed the Y-DNA tests for two other Holloway men. Y-DNA is useful because it is only passed
down from father to son. When men
share Y-DNA, it indicates that they share a patrilineal ancestor; that is, an
ancestor on his father’s father’s father’s line. The Y-DNA
test for C. Holloway is for a man who descends from James P. Holloway who was
born in Virginia in 1815. The other
test is for J. Holloway who descends from George Whitfield Holloway who was
born about 1774 in Halifax County, Virginia.
George is believed to be the son of Nathaniel Holloway who was born in
the 1740s. Both of these tests are
close matches to a test that I manage for a cousin who is the great grandson
of Young Brooks. Somewhere up their
family trees, these three men who took DNA tests share a patrilineal
ancestor, and this is a clue toward discovering the father of Young Brooks.
The three men who share Y-DNA have a common
distant grandfather. (Larger image.) Now, let’s
talk about that court case. On
February 25, 1805, Nathan Holloway appeared before the Halifax County court
“upon a charge exhibited against him by Sarah Brooks, a free single woman of
the said County.... Whereupon the said
Sarah Brooks failing to appear, the court proceeded to examine and consider
the charge of record to which the said Holloway pleaded not guilty. Thereupon, on hearing the testimony of
sundry witnesses and exhibits introduced and read by consent, it is the
opinion of the court that the said Holloway is guilty of the charge
aforesaid. And it is ordered that the
said Nathan Holloway pay the sum of five pounds annually to the overseer of
the poor of the said county for and towards the support and maintenance of
the said Bastard child for the span of seven years next coming.”
Halifax
Plea Book 22, p350-1. FHL film
#8572483. (FamilySearch link) That is, in
1805, Nathan Holloway was charged with having a child with Sarah Brooks. I’m convinced that this child was Young
Nathan Brooks, named after his father Nathan.
This is in agreement with the family story that Young Nathan Brooks
was born in 1805 and named after his father.
The twist is that he was called “Young Nathan” since he was the son of
– let’s call him – “Old Nathan”. The
case was in Halifax County which is where Young’s brother Stokes Brooks is
thought to have been born. There are two
points that don’t exactly line up with the family story. The first issue is the birthdate. Nathan Holloway appeared in court on
February 25, 1805, and it seems clear that the baby had already been
born. However, Young’s headstone at
Garden Creek Cemetery in Stone Mountain gives his birthdate as March 29,
1805. The court case is more than a
month too early. I attibute this to an
error on the headstone. I’ve seen lots
of headstones with wrong dates, and sometimes they’re wrong by several years! This discrepancy of perhaps only five weeks
isn’t a deal breaker. The other
issue to contend with is the name of Young’s mother. Her name is supposed to be Rebecca, but
here we have the name Sarah. The
earliest reference to the name Rebecca being given as the mother of Stokes
and Young is a 1972 letter written by Nora Warren Gilliam who descended from
both Stokes and Young. She certainly
never met Young’s mother, so any knowledge of her name would have been passed
down through the family. Maybe she
remembered the name incorrectly, or the wrong name was passed down to
her. This discrepancy would explain
why the name of Rebecca Brooks never appears in Wilkes County records. Maybe we’ve been looking for the wrong
person! Sarah Brooks Let’s assume
that Sarah Brooks was the mother of Young Brooks, and that she arrived in
Wilkes County a short time after he was born.
What can we find in the local records to support that theory? The first
mention of Sarah Brooks in Wilkes County is a land grant entry dated October
16, 1812, for 50 acres on the waters of Rock Creek. She purchased this land, and a grant was
issued to her on October 1, 1814.
Wilkes County land entry for Sarah Brooks, October
16, 1812. (Larger image.)
50-acre survey for Sarah Brooks, August 22,
1814. The grant was issued on October
1. (Larger image.) As part of my
land grant mapping
project, I’ve identified where Sarah’s 50 acres was located. It straddled what is now NC Hwy 268 on the
east side of Rock Creek. This is less
than two miles southeast of the airport.
Her
50 acres is shaded blue on my map.
The entry described the property as adjoining the land that William
Sebastian sold to John Foster. The
150-acre Sebastian tract is shaded in red. Nearly twenty
years later, we have another interesting land record. On August 12, 1833, Young N. Brooks entered
50 acres on Rock Creek adjoining the land of Sarah Brooks.
Wilkes Land Entry #4757 to Young N. Brooks, August
12, 1833. If our theory
is correct, Young Brooks is interested in buying 50 acres adjoining his
mother’s land. For whatever reason,
Young chose not to purchase this land, and no grant was ever issued to him
for it. Maybe he didn’t have enough
money, or maybe he didn’t really need the land after all. But the important point is that we know he
considered buying land that adjoined that of the woman we suspect of being
his mother. But there’s more! One year
after Young’s entry, Stokes Brooks made his own entry. On August 23, 1834, Stokes Brooks entered
100 acres on Rock Creek, and the grant for this property was issued to him in
1839. This adjoined the 150-acre
Sebastian grant that adjoined Sarah’s property. And it’s worth noting that Stokes Brooks
had recently purchased this Sebastian grant.
While the deed for his purchase seems to be missing, he sold it in
1841 to Joseph Wood (DB S, p37).
Stokes Brooks also purchased two smaller grants on Rock Creek in
1837. One was for 14 acres and the
other was for 22 acres.
Snapshot from my
land grants map showing Sarah Brooks and Stokes Brooks with land on Rock
Creek. After
considering all of these land records, we have both Stokes AND Young Brooks
involved with land that adjoined the property of Sarah Brooks who we already
suspected of being their mother. This
theory is moving away from “maybe it’s only a coincidence” territory and
toward “this is a pattern” that proves the theory correct. 1830 Bastardy Bond Young Brooks
fathered several children with women who were not his wife. While his name appears multiple times among
the Wilkes County bastardy bonds, one entry is different. On August 10, 1830, Elizabeth Brooks was
charged with having an illegitimate child that might become a burden to the
county. She refused to name the
father, so she was bound by the court to promise that she could support the
child. She signed the document with
her mark. Young N. Brooks signed the
document as her security for the maintenance of her child.
1830 bastardy bond for Elizabeth Brooks, signed by
Young N. Brooks. Why would
Young Brooks offer to help Elizabeth Brooks support a child when he wasn’t
the father? There must be some other
relationship between them. For reasons
that I’ll explain shortly, I believe that Young and Elizabeth were brother
and sister. Along with Stokes, they
were the three children of Sarah Brooks. Census Records Now it’s time
to investigate the census records. The
1820 census includes a listing for Sarah Brooks with a household of five. one
female (over age 45) - Sarah (born before 1775) one
female (16-25) - Elizabeth (born 1795-1804) one
female (0-9) one
male (16-18) - Stokes (born 1802-1804) one
male (10-15) - Young (born 1805-1810) (There is
another Sarah Brooks in this census, but she is only age 16-25, much too
young to be the woman we’re looking for.) The 1830
census includes three Sarah/Sally Brooks which is surprising since women were
usually not the head of household. One
Sally is the younger one from 1820, now in her 20s and still too young to be
the woman that we are looking for.
Another Sally Brooks (RR) is age 50-59 with four others in the
household. The “RR” notation in the
census probably stands for Roaring River to differentiate her from the
others. I don’t know who she is yet,
and she might belong to a different family.
Since we know that our Sarah Brooks owned 50 acres on Rock Creek, I
believe she is the one who is listed with a household of four. one
female (60-69) - Sarah (born 1761-1770) one
female (30-39) - Elizabeth (born 1791-1800) one
male (20-29) - Young (born 1801-1810) one
male (5-9) - Elizabeth’s child from
1830 bond Stokes Brooks
married Clarissa Reynolds in 1822, and their family is listed separately. In 1840, the
household of Elizabeth Brooks is listed with four in the household. one
female (80-89) - Sarah (born 1751-1760) one
female (40-49) - Elizabeth (born 1791-1800) one
male (5-9) one
male (0-4) - David (born 1836-1840) In 1840,
Young Brooks was listed with his family in Iredell County. Stokes Brooks was listed in Wilkes
County. I should also point out that
the woman I labeled as Sarah seems to have aged twenty years from 1830 to
1840. Perhaps she was on the edge of
the age bracket. She might have been
69 years old in 1830, and 80 years old in 1840. Also, age discrepancies were not uncommon
in early census records. Changes and New Homes A lot of
changes occurred for the Brooks family in the 1840s. In 1844, Sarah Brooks sold her 50 acres on
Rock Creek (DB 68, p575). However, the
deed was not registered until 55 years later in 1909, and that makes the
exact date of the sale uncertain.
Perhaps this was approximately when Sarah Brooks died. She might have sold it just before her
death, or maybe Elizabeth sold it just after her death in the mid 1840s. For whatever reason, the deed wasn’t
officially processed, but that oversight was corrected in 1909. In 1841,
Stokes Brooks sold his adjoining property on Rock Creek, and he bought land
on Widows Creek at Stone Mountain. In 1846,
Elizabeth Brooks married John Ashley Reynolds. They are listed in the 1850 census where he
is 76 years old and she is 52 years old (born Virginia). Also in the household is John’s youngest
son Elza with wife Susan, and a boy named David Brooks who was 13 years
old. David must be Elizabeth’s son who
was the boy under age 5 in the 1840 census. John and
Elizabeth were married on October 15, 1846.
John had been married to Nancy Cleveland for over 50 years until her
death on February 1 of that year. He
quickly married Elizabeth only eight months later. Does that tell us anything about their
relationship? John Reynolds was a
wealthy landowner on Rock Creek, and he was the father of Clarissa Reynolds,
the wife of Stokes Brooks. The
Reynolds and Brooks families had surely known each other since Sarah first
arrived in 1812. They had been
neighbors for over 30 years. I can’t
help but wonder if John Reynolds might be the father of one or more of
Elizabeth’s children. Perhaps he was
the father whom Elizabeth refused to name in 1830. There’s no evidence of this, but it is a
possibility. By 1850, both
Stokes and Young Brooks had moved to Stone Mountain where they are found in
the census. I haven’t found Sarah
Brooks in the 1850 census, and I believe she died in 1844 or 1845 near the
time when her land was sold. Sarah’s
daughter Elizabeth got married for the first time at the age of 48. If Sarah were still alive, it seems likely
that she would have been living with one of them in 1850. Sarah Brooks
was born about 1760 based on an average of the census records. If she died in 1845, she would have been 85
years old. That’s not the 99 years old
claimed by her descendant, but it was still a very old age at that time. As for
Elizabeth, her husband John Reynolds died in 1859, and she is not found in
the 1860 census. She was born about
1798 and likely died sometime in the 1850s.
Stokes and Young both died in 1886. Elizabeth’s son David
Brooks Until now, I
was not aware of Elizabeth or her son David who was born in 1837. For Wilkes County, there is a collection of
papers from school censuses between 1841 and 1853. I was hoping to find David there, and sure
enough, he is! On a page for District
38 that appears to be from 1843, there are three Brooks children (age 5 to
21) who each attended school for 24 days during the two-month session. They were Eli A. Brooks, Washington Brooks,
and David Brooks.
1843 School census for District 38. Another page for
District 38 from a two-month session in 1845 shows the same three boys with
Eli (37 days), Washington (35 days), and David (21 days). A page dated January 10, 1849, from
District 38 includes David Brooks who attended 40 days, presumably during the
year 1848. A page dated September 26,
1849, from District 37 includes David Brooks, but it does not give the number
of days in attendance. In the 1840s,
school census District 38 was in the Rock Creek area. The district reached from the Yadkin River
northward to where the airport is today.
This district clearly includes the land owned by Sarah Brooks and
Stokes Brooks. In 2022, I mapped these
school districts and put it online.
Also, many of these school records were compiled by George and Joyce
McNeil in the 1990s, and the
book is available from the Wilkes Heritage Museum.
Snapshot from my Wilkes school
census district map showing District 38 on Rock Creek. Since David
was living with Elizabeth and her new husband in 1850, it’s very likely that
he was her son. It’s also possible
that Eli A. Brooks and Washington Brooks were her sons, too. I couldn’t find any other mention of
Washington Brooks. He is only
mentioned in the 1843 and 1845 school censuses. Eli is listed in those same two school
censuses, but he is also found in a marriage bond with Mary Brewer dated
November 4, 1846. He is not in the
1850 Wilkes census. He is not in the
1860 Wilkes census either, but his family – including an eight-month-old son
named Berry – are listed. David Brooks
is not in the 1860 census for Wilkes County, but I found him in the Sullivan
County, Missouri, census. He was a
23-year-old farmhand living with the family of Jesse Yates who was age 46. (As a fun fact, this Jesse Yates is the
brother of Sallie and Adelaide Yates who married Eng and Chang Bunker, the
Siamese Twins.) The only other
reference that I found for David is that he won a court case against Jesse
Yates in 1860 involving money that Jesse owed to him. David would have been the right age to have
been in the Civil War, but I don’t know if he served. I couldn’t find him in the 1870 census. Sarah Brooks’ Family Tree Now that
we’ve identified Sarah’s three children and twenty of her grandchildren, we
can show the whole family in a family tree.
The three children and twenty grandchildren of
Sarah Brooks. (Larger image.) Looking at
the family tree above, we see that Young Brooks named his first two children
Sarah and Eliza. Perhaps Sarah was
named after Young’s mother, and Eliza was named after his sister. Of course, Young’s wife was named
Elizabeth, so Eliza might have been named after her. Sarah Brooks and Nathan
Holloway Sarah Brooks
is mentioned several times in the criminal court papers for Wilkes
County. I haven’t provided details
about those instances because it’s difficult to know which Sarah/Sally was
involved. Remember there were three
women by this name who were head of household in 1830, and there were others
who lived in the county who were not named in the census because the
household was listed the husband’s name.
One such example was Sarah Bauguess Brooks (born 1800) who married
Zachariah Brooks. At this point, I
haven’t found a connection between Zachariah Brooks and the Sarah Brooks from
Halifax County, but there could be a connection a few generations back. I’ll mention
a few of the court records involving women named Sarah Brooks. In 1821, a Sarah Brooks was charged with
petty larceny from Sarah Hawkins. In
1822, one Sarah spent twenty days in jail.
The same year Sarah was assaulted by Sarah Shackleford. In 1830, one Sarah was in an affray, and
Jordan Chavers acted as her surety.
One of the other Sarahs (probably the one born in 1775) had a son
named Vincent who was born in 1814. A
younger Sarah had a daughter named Mahala who was born in 1820. Some records name Sarah Sr. and Sarah Jr.
but I don’t believe either of these are related to our Sarah Brooks of
Halifax County – although that could change with more research. It would be nice
to know more about Sarah Brooks’ family in Halifax County, Virginia. Perhaps a clue can be found in the
deeds. On April 7, 1805, Richard
Brooks and his wife Nancy sold 25.5 acres to Nathan Holloway (Halifax DB 23,
p153). The land was located on the
south side of the Dan River on the waters of Winns Creek, adjoining Robert
Moore and James Brooks. This was
within four miles of the North Carolina state line just east of where State
Road 119 runs into US-58. It’s 13
miles southwest of South Boston, Virginia. There is an
1814 deed for this same property when it was being sold by William
Holloway. A note says that the land
had been conveyed to him by his father Nathan Holloway. Earlier, I noted that one of the Y-DNA
matches descends from George Whitfield Holloway who was born about 1774, and
that George is believed to be the son of Nathaniel Holloway who was born in
the 1740s. Could it be the same Nathan
Holloway who was the father of Young, the father of George Whitfield
Holloway, and the one who bought land from Richard Brooks? It’s possible that this is all the same
man. It’s also possible that a
Nathaniel Holloway had a son Nathan Jr, and either of them could be the one
in the 1805 deed. More research is
needed on the Holloway family of Halifax County. It seems
likely that our Sarah Brooks was somehow related to the Richard Brooks and
wife Nancy who sold land to Nathan Holloway.
Likewise, the James Brooks who owned adjoining property could be a
relative, too. The 1800 Halifax County
tax list includes seven Brooks families:
George (x2), James (x2), Robert, Richard, and John Brooks. And while
we’re looking at tax lists, let’s not forget Stokes Brooks. If he was named after his father, then we
should also look for a Mr. Stokes in Halifax County. The 1800 Halifax County tax list has seven
Stokes families: Sherod, Elizabeth,
Richard, Samuel, Selah, and German Y. Stokes.
Perhaps the father of Stokes Brooks belongs to one of these families. Now that we
know about the Halifax County connection, records there should be checked
more closely for any mention of Stokes’ birth in 1802 and the birth of his
sister Elizabeth about 1798. The 1805
court record for Young’s birth says that there were “sundry witnesses” who
testified. Maybe their statements
still exist in either Halifax County or at the Virginia Archives in
Richmond! Maybe there are other
Virginia court documents that would provide more details about this family. I’m confident
that Sarah Brooks was the mother of Elizabeth, Stokes, and Young Brooks in
Wilkes County. I came to that
conclusion using every record that I could think of including censuses, tax
records, marriages, deeds, maps, and court records. Surely there are other existing documents
that either show conflicting facts, or that support my reasoning. If you have anything to add, please let me
know! Links: My two Wilkes County tax list
books My Wilkes Land Grants Research Ancestry of my grandfather Bill Brooks,
descendant of Stokes Brooks FamilySearch’s new
Full-Text Search Tool 1841-1853
Wilkes County, NC, School Census from the Wilkes Heritage Museum Log
Cabin Families of Stone Mountain, NC, book
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