James Harper Brooks

BROOKS, HARPER, HARTSHORN

Posted By: Jeanie
Date: 5/18/2005 at 12:37:10

James H. Brooks.

James Harper Brooks comes of good patriotic fighting stock, both grandfathers were in the revolution. His grandsire Harper was a colonel; his grandsire Brooks a private. His parents were James Brooks, farmer, steamboat owner and contractor, and Mary Harper, industrious, well-to-do people residing at the time of the son’s birth on the 3d of April, 1829, at Conneaut, Ashtabula County, Ohio. His father was a private under General Harrison during the second contest with the mother country. James Harper made Ashtabula County his home until past age, although he was absent, more or less, nearly every year after sixteen. He finished his education at Kingsville Academy, in his native County.

In his seventeenth year his father sent him to Illinois with two thousand sheep, the only assistance he had was a boy one year younger than himself. His eighteenth year he spent mainly on the farm at home.

During the seasons of 1848 and 1849 he acted as clerk on the steamer Ohio, owned by his father, and run on Lake Erie.

In the spring of 1851 Mr. Brooks moved to Kane County, Illinois; there farmed for three years, then took a contract on the Chicago & Northwestern railroad, furnishing the ties and some other wood-work for the track from Junction to Dixon.

In the spring of 1856 he removed to Iowa, settling in Otter Creek township, Tama County, alternating between farming and railroading for ten or eleven years; most of this time, when off the farm, he was an employee rather than a contractor.

In the spring of 1866 Mr. Brooks moved his family into the new village of Tama City, then springing up on the Northwestern railroad, two miles south of Toledo. He went on the Union Pacific railroad and spent fourteen months there as a contractor, in company with Lewis Carmichael, the work done being largely between the Black Hills and Ogden. The operations of Mr. Brooks at this period were very successful.

Since leaving the Union Pacific Mr. Brooks has done some heavy work on the Chicago & Northwestern railroad in Monroe County, Wisconsin, on the Baraboo division.

Meantime he was also farming, merchandising and banking, mainly by proxy, and, strange to say, making a success of every branch. He has a thousand acres of land in this County, all under good improvement, most of it cultivated by renters. He is of the firm of Brooks & Holmes, dry goods merchants at Tama City; the business being managed principally by his partner, Ryland A. Holmes, a promising young man, son of Rev. O. A. Holmes. This firm was formed two years ago, and is one of the largest and best in the place.

Mr. Brooks has been in the banking business for seven years, and is of the firm of Brooks & Moore at Traer, Tama County, and of Brooks & Moore Brothers at Reinbeck, Grundy County, both places on the Pacific branch of the Burlington, Cedar Rapids & Northern railroad.

Mr. Brooks has great energy and pluck, usually pushing his business rather than allowing his business to push him. He has kept all the irons in the fire, but let none of them become overheated.

Lately he has let others assume most of the labor, and having a competency, he lives very much at his ease. He has one of the most delightful residences in the County, located in a two acre lot most tastefully embellished. The house alone cost twenty-five thousand dollars, and the entire homestead, as it stands, must be worth nearly twice that sum.

Mr. Brooks was in early life a whig; since 1855 he has been a republican; is very decided in his political sentiments; is ready to help a worthy friend to office, but has no aspirations himself in that direction.

His wife was Miss Harriet Hartshorn, of Erie County, Pennsylvania. Married at Meadville on the 5th of December, 1850. Both are active members of the Baptist church, filling their places and generously responding to the calls and requirements of the church, and of religious charitable objects generally. Few kinder hearted men live than James H. Brooks. He not only pities the poor and unfortunate, but is always ready to help them.

Mr. and Mrs. Brooks have had two children, but lost one of them. Arthur Lee Brooks, their only living child, has a family, and is managing the home farm, paying particular attention to the stock department. He is energetic like his father, a hard worker and a young man of sterling worth.

From the History of Tama County, Iowa. by Samuel D. Chapman. Printed at the Toledo Times Office. 1879. Pages 167 to 169.