Brooks Family History

The BROOKS Family History website was created in 2004 for my own Family tree encorporating other surnames many of whom come from Nidderdale.

The website has changed many times since 2004 the latest change in 2010 is what you now see and is updated frequently.

2011 My own Brooks Family tree and the two databases I have for the One-Name Study & DNA Project have now been added into one large database.

January 2013 The database now contains 180 BROOKS family trees.

In 2006 it became apparent I needed to research other unrelated BROOKS families in my Yorkshire area just to see if they were or were not related the problem is and still is once we go beyond the 1841 census and need to rely more on parish records it is harder to prove relationships some parish records just state William son of John. In many cases within a couple of years you can find more than one instance of this and even worse if it is the same month and year you then do not know which John they refer to. Families also move away and without a national database like the census how can you trace your Ancestors movements I still today have no record of burials for some of my own ancestors so do not know if they died and were buried without a record being kept or lost or if they moved away.

DNA was the only answer if enough people of the same surname all test their DNA and publish their results so others with the same genetic make up can pick out matches then can you see if your family is related to the other and open up so much more research options could you then locate these ancestors and other lost branches of the tree.

The BROOKS Surname DNA Project is doing just that and the BROOKS DNA Tree within this website has some of the trees from the projects members.

Because I was researching so many other BROOKS families apart from my own I created a One-Name Study tree to publish a small part of these trees in the hope the families related to them would see these and become involved with further research and DNA in the hope of learning new things.

I am contacted by many people throughout the world and the website has now become my contribution to the BROOKS Surname and an arena to publish some of my databases and help everyone else. I am now able to link to other BROOKS families and those of us who do contact each other and do do DNA tests know so much more than we did before not only do we know our deep ancestral roots i.e Celt, Viking or knowing we have a direct link to the Romans who once occupied our lands we also know whether we are related genetically or form our own distinct branch of the BROOKS Surname.

Many of us want to know how and when our Surname occurred it is long established that surnames while in use many years before for the rich and noble, but for the majority did not really get used untill the 1400s or even later, most of our records are from the mid 1500s and it was a long held belief that the name was a form of BROKE or BROOK then eventually some of our names changed from BROOK BROOKE or BROOKES and BROOKS.

Some even like I once did state the names were different a BROOK was a BROOK or BROOKE and BROOKS a BROOKS or BROOKES.

My own family have always been one form or the other of BROOKS BRUCKS the most common form in the 1600s I have found no record indicating our name was BROKE or BROOK before that time.

I have only found one branch of my family change from BROOKS to BROOK do get an odd misspelling of BROOKES but no one has ever changed to that variation permanantly.

There are many occurances in the 1851 census of BROOKS where the family were written as BROOK in the 1841 Census. I have also found that after 1841, 1851 there are many instances of BROOK becoming BROOKS.

The name is a very common name and no way can I collect evidence for every individual family but the research I do for the name is very important to everyone. So I would like to ask all those BROOK, BROOKE, BROOKES & BROOKS Family Historians to get your or your Male realtions DNA tested and become involved in deciphering the mysteries we all ask and lets see how many distinct families we can find and more importantly how many lost branches we can locate.

I am happy to share my databases and happy to help with research for one branch or the other but please I do ask for your help in return can you add to the database the biggest one that needs doing which I will never be able to do on my own is collect Parish Records with thanks to many local Family History Societys I can now purchase transcribed parish records but many of these have much missing data from them and cost is prohibitive to buy them on mass. I would welcome any help.

I am also collecting BMDs I purchase so many each year for the trees I research and have on the website many non related to my own, without these documents many trees will be left with information missing or even possibly wrong as mistakes do occur and need verifying I would welcome any copies of these certifcates and please consider if you have original or purchased copies that may well end up in the bin at a later date or upon a death please do send them to me. All my records upon my own death are to be held in repositories and copies of these held by the Guild of One-Name Studies so anyone in the future can carry on my own work and expand on it.

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