Peasants to Puddles
My Family History - By Nicky Rowberry

The Brookes Family of Tarrington in Herefordshire

I've spent many years researching my own Brookes family in Herefordshire, making the occasional note of other Brooks or Brookes, but not paying them much attention. But recently a DNA test indicated that our Brookes family was related to a hitherto unknown Brooks family with descendants in the USA. This set me on a quest to link up the two families, so I started searching the Herefordshire records for Brooks/Brookes references. While still no closer to finding the connection I was looking for, I started to build up a large amount of information about other families. So in the hope that this information might be of use to someone out there and that maybe in turn someone can help me find my "missing link" I thought I'd start putting some other Brookes trees up on the Peasants to Puddles website.

So this is the third of those trees - I've called it the Brookes family of Tarrington, just because Tarrington is the village in Herefordshire where many of the early generations lived, although latter generations obviously spread out from there.

This tree actually merges two seemingly separate trees when Thomas Brookes marries Ann Brooks in 1844 in Stoke Edith. Ann was the daughter of Thomas Brooks and Mary Willis of Stoke Edith and Thomas was the son of Thomas Brookes & Susannah Wigley of Tarrington. The image below shows Thomas & Susannah's marriage from 1811 and the one below that shows the baptism of Thomas junior.

Thomas & Ann Brookes raised a large family in and around the Lugwardine/Withington area of Herefordshire before Thomas's untimely death in 1864 aged only 45. Ann was left in Lugwardine with a large family of young children to raise on her own, all of which seemed to have survived to adulthood - no easy task for a single parent in those days!

I've not traced all of Thomas and Ann's children yet but at least two of the boys stayed in the area and raised large families. John Brookes married Louisa Godsall and Edmund Brookes married Frances Parker. Edmund & Frances stayed in Lugwardine and are in fact buried there. The photo below shows their gravestone which also commemorates two of their children. The second photo shows Lugwardine War Memorial which commemorates their son Archer Percival Brookes who died at Gallipoli in 1915.

There must be lots of descendants of this family out there still. It would be lovely to hear from anyone with a connection to this branch of Brookes of Herefordshire. In particular it would be lovely to get some photos of some of the people shown in the tree below, or any additional information to flesh it out a bit.

The family tree below summarises what I know about this Brookes family. It is hopefully reasonably accurate, but if you spot any errors, or any relatives, please feel free to E-mail me

For my own Brookes family please click

Other Herefordshire Brookes/Brooks families

If any of the above is of further interest, please feel free to contact me at: n.rowberry@btinternet.com

If you've not found your Brooks/Brookes family on my pages, why not have a look at the Brooks One Name Study website - packed with information on the surname for families all over the country:

© Nicky Rowberry 2014

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Peasants to Puddles - My Family History. By Nicky Rowberry