RanHam Tree » Mary Brooks

Personal data Mary Brooks 

• A child of Richard Brooks and Elizabeth

Household of Mary Brooks

She has/had a relationship with Nicholas Gentry.

Child(ren):

1. Nicholas Gentry  ± 1744-???? 

Notes about Mary Brooks

The Brooks Family Connection
Mary Brooks, Nicholas' wife, and Sarah Brooks, David's wife, were both daughters of Richard and Elizabeth Brooks. Other members of the extended Brooks family also were closely associated with the Gentry family. They appear to have descended from a Richard Brooks Sr. whose will was probated in Hanover County, Virginia in 1734. (We will refer to him as Richard-I). In this will he bequeathed his estate to his wife, Mary (Gibson) Brooks, sons William, Richard, and Robert, and daughters Sarah and Massilina. This son Richard was undoubtedly the Richard Brooks Jr. (Richard-II, see chart below) to which reference is made in a number of Louisa County land grants and deeds, including the grants of land on Dirty Swamp to Samuel Gentry and to Nicholas-II Gentry (see refr. 2 for this and other deeds involving the Brooks family). The deeds also identify his wife as named Elizabeth. This same Richard moved to Lunenburg County at the same time as the Gentrys and is referred to there as Richard Sr. In turn this Richard was the father of a third Richard (Richard-IIIa, who died young in Lunenburg County and who was married to Susannah), and the father of Elisha Gentry (whose wife was Frances). Elisha and his cousin Richard (Richard-IIIb, son of Robert) filed for a land grant in South Carolina in 1766 at the same time as Richard's daughter Sarah Gentry.
Richard's brother, Robert-II, appears to be the individual who filed for a land grant in Lunenburg County and who turned around and sold a part of the grant to Nicholas Gentry. Robert must have been the father of the fourth Richard (Richard-IIIb, whose wife was Lucretia), to whom he sold land in 1748. Robert apparently moved from Lunenburg County to Halifax County, Virginia, as he was identified in 1763 as being from there, at the same time as he sold part of his land to Artha Brooks. A Matthew Brooks is also found in Lunenburg records and witnessed one of the deeds in which Nicholas sold the land he had originally purchased from Robert Brooks. Both Artha and Matthew were probably sons of Robert-II. Matthew Brooks moved to Surry County at about the same time as the Gentry brothers, and was closely associated there with both Joseph and with Nicholas. As will be seen in a forthcoming article, it is very probable that a daughter of Matthew married Joseph's oldest son, Samuel-IV, thereby tying the two families even closer together.
A John Brooks who bought David Gentry's land in Louisa County was probably the same John Brooks who later moved to Lunenburg County, bought land there, and appears in Cumberland Parish records along with William and Allen Gentry. Later, he was listed in the census of taxables in Caswell County, North Carolina, at the same time as Allen, Samuel and Shadrack Gentry. Eventually his daughter, Elizabeth, married Abednego Gentry. He probably was a son of Robert-II. To further confuse matters, in the St. Paul's Parish processioning records in 1712 and again in 1716, there are listed "Rob't Brooks orphans" who were listed as land owners in the same precinct as Richard Brooks. These could not have been children of Richard-I because his will was written many years later. Perhaps Richard-I had a brother, Robert-I. Children of this original Robert Brooks, are thought to have moved to Brunswick County, Virginia, (from which Lunenburg County was formed) and to Halifax and Mecklenburg Counties. Members of the various Brooks families were present in Halifax County at the same time leading to considerable difficulty in distinguishing between them.

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