Malcolm Brooks wrote: >I am interested in Jeffrey Lash's information concerning Gilbert Brooks >and his brother William, contained Vol#117 of the Brooks NE-D Digest. I am >a descendent of William Brooks of Springfield. I wonder if the two >Williams are the same person. No. The recorded and thus known lives of William of Scituate and William of Springfield overlap by about 40 years. They are distinctly separate identities. >Some years ago I was researching passenger lists and I came upon the >following information contained in a book entitled, "The Planters of the >Commonwealth", by Charles E. Banks: >William Brooke Age 20 Servant Marshfield >Gilbert Brooke Age 14 Servant Marshfield >Ship Hopewell > >From London >To Boston >Date 1635 >Left Sept. >Arrived Nov. >Is my information incorrect, or is this simply a coincidence involving >persons with similar names? These are the Brooke brothers who did indeed come over on the Blessing in 1635 as servants of William Vassall. They're accounted for from their embarkation in England until their deaths in New England. William of Springfield has long been suggested to have come from London, and to have been born in 1610. Those origins are quite murky to my mind. But he is well-recorded at Springfield and Deerfield from 1646 until his death in 1688. He also had so many children of his own (16) that one would be hard-pressed to additionally squeeze in the Scituate man's progeny. :-) >Where is Scituate? On the southeastern rim of Massachusetts Bay. The bay forms a rough semicircle with Boston at 9 o'clock, Salem at 12 o'clock and Scituate at 5 o'clock, with the Atlantic to the east. Scituate is only perhaps 15 miles to Boston's outskirts as the crow flies, and was a flourishing port in the 17th century. Chris