W.A. Brooks

I think I may have finally found more information on my great-great-grandfather, W.A. Brooks. Until recently, the only documented name I had for him was W.A. Brooks. Both the Kaufman county marriage records and his tombstone only list his initials. My Aunt Mary had told me before that she thought his name was William Ashbury Brooks, but I had nothing to confirm that. Then recently I received a picture of him and his wife from a cousin and it was captioned Asberry Brooks.

I know from the census records that W.A. Brooks died before 1910, as his widow, Ruby, and her children were living with her parents in Kaufman County. I found a W.A. Brooks buried in Rains-Hall Cemetery near the Kaufman/Dallas county line. The tombstone states that he was born July 10, 1881 and died October 1, 1908. (BTW, July 10th also happened to be my mother’s birthday!)

I had been searching in Kaufman county for other records for W.A. Brooks. I found many Brooks families but no connection. So I thought since the community they are believed to have lived in is so close to the Dallas County line, I would look in Dallas County. I found a family in the Dallas County 1900 census that listed a William A Brooks born July 1881. I’m almost certain this is my man but I would love to have more proof. Since the census lists how many children are born to a mother and how many are still living, I am hoping I can find his mother in the 1910 census and that it will indicate that she has one less child. However, I am having great difficulty finding this family as the 1910 census at Ancestry.com only has a head-of-household index. I’ve even tried looking for their neighbors in hopes of finding them nearby, but haven’t had much luck there either. The other roadblock is that the 1910 census index is not directly linked to the images so you have to do a bit more manual labor to find the right page.

But even still, this is all much more luck than I had been having!