brooks.snyder@att.net wrote: > Help! My ggg-grandfather was William BROOKS, b. abt 1770; > d. 1848 in Nashville TN. According to family lore, our > ancestry includes Rev. Phillips BROOKS & Abigail (BROOKS) > ADAMS. I’ve found early 1800’s tax records in Nashville > for William – also for both Christopher & Matthew BROOKS, > but don’t know if they are all related. Any info on > William's ancestry would be appreciated. Which William? :-) William is, after John, the most common given name among male New England Brookses. In my own one-name regional study on New England Brooks families, I've identified 294 men with first name William and surname Brooks. Eight of these for whom I've found a documented DOB were born between 1764 and 1775, all in New England. None have any known connection with Tennessee. If you can give us *something* — anything — in the way of particulars about your William's origins, we could try to determine his identity, or offer suggestions for how to do so. But as the list administrator, and the resident one-name researcher, it's sometimes my unappealing duty to puncture family legends. Phillips Brooks was one of the most famous Americans of the 19th century, so family lore often borrows him as a relation without supporting evidence. But his line is exceedingly well-documented — his father spent decades compiling their family history, aside from the standard evidentiary resources available today — and there are no Southern connections. You can read a biography of Phillips Brooks in the first issue of the publication Tributaries, which can be downloaded from the Publications link at the URL in my signature below. The Abigail you mention would be Abigail Brown Brooks, who married Charles Francis Adams, son of John Quincy and grandson of John. Charles Francis Adams was Lincoln's minister to England during the Civil War. Abigail was a daughter of Peter Chardon Brooks, reputedly the first millionaire (maritime insurance) in Massachusetts, and a kinswoman of Phillips Brooks, whose father, William Gray Brooks of Boston, was a grand-nephew of Peter C. Brooks. Again, this line is quite well-documented due to the prominence of the names I've mentioned, and I have not seen any Southern connection. I ran a search of my own main database for any Brooks with any event in Tennessee. Out of 45,000 people, 11,000 of them surnamed Brooks, with roughly 96,000 defined events, I find a total of three events in Tennessee, and two of these are in the 20th century. Pelatiah Brooks, born in 1824 into the Glastonbury (CT) line, did venture into Tennessee in the 19th century, but that's still a century too late for your needs. I can send you privately the ancestral lines for Phillips Brooks and Abigail Brown Brooks if you like. Perhaps another subscriber to this list can offer more. Sorry I couldn't be of more help. Chris |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| Christopher Brooks BROOKS Families of New England http://www.tributaries.org ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||