Steven Curry wrote: > I have a "three brothers came over from England" story in > my family, but have never been able to document anything. > I noticed that you commented (below) that the "three > brothers" story is found frequently in genealogy. Might > you expand on this? The "brothers" legend is attached to many surnames. Oddly, when I search my own hard drive, I come up empty, but I know that I have an extract somewhere of an 1869 book by a southerner named I think Headen, which says, "There were six Brooks brothers in England who went to America. Three went north, and three went south." And thus we have a simplistic explanation for the fact that there are numerous unrelated Brooks lines in North America. Google for "six brothers," and you'll even find a children's book about the six brothers who were turned into swans. There were, of course, the few occasions when exactly three brothers did come over. :-) If any of our readers has a Richardson in the family tree, they might well descend from one of the three Richardson brothers who helped settle Woburn, MA around 1640. Chris

Three has some mystical significance, the trinity perhaps. My OCHELTREE line is said to have originated with "three brothers" as have may other families. Have you ever noticed that it's never "three sisters" or "two brothers and their sister." As the father of three daughters when reading old folk tales to the girls I constantly had to vary the outcome as the story usually involved "three brothers" or "three sisters" who had to overcome great odds. It was always the youngest who succeeded and this would never pass muster with my brood. Cliff Ocheltree

In our family, there seem to be groups of five. Five Stroud's here; five Stroud's there, etc. These five's turned out to be correct though. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Clifford J OCHELTREE" <mbcjo@cox.net> To: <BROOKS-NE-L@rootsweb.com> Sent: Thursday, June 15, 2006 10:51 PM Subject: Re: [BNE] Re: "Three brothers" > > Three has some mystical significance, the trinity perhaps. My OCHELTREE > line is said to have originated with "three brothers" as have may other > families. Have you ever noticed that it's never "three sisters" or "two > brothers and their sister." > > As the father of three daughters when reading old folk tales to the > girls I constantly had to vary the outcome as the story usually involved > "three brothers" or "three sisters" who had to overcome great odds. It > was always the youngest who succeeded and this would never pass muster > with my brood. > > Cliff Ocheltree > > > > ==== BROOKS-NE Mailing List ==== > When posting, please use a relevant, not recycled, subject line. This is a key to successful searching of the message archive. >