Mesopatamia, Ohio, general store dates back to days of Amadeus Brooks
Ruth P. Haskell Daggett's third husband was Amadeus Brooks
We have learned that the elderly lady who was looked after by Herbert and Hattie Stetson was the older half-sister of Hattie's mother. She had been born in 1800 as Ruth Putnam Haskell but was known now as Ruth P. Brooks. But we didn't know who Brooks was or the circumstances of her remarriage.
I thought there would be a connection to another Brooks branch from Ohio that is in the tree, but I now think that it's a coincidence. Ruth's niece Marian Wallace Haskell, a daughter of Artemus, married Julius C. Brooks from Erie County, Ohio. That turns out to be the Sandusky area, not especially close to Trumbull County south of Ashtabula where the Haskell family was situated.
But another Brooks branch shows up all over the Trumbull County tax records, where area farmers' livestock counts are recorded annually. There are tax records for Amadeus Brooks from about 1810 to 1840 in Trumbull County, mostly in Mesopatamia, Ohio, five miles west of North Bloomfield, but also in Troy and Poland townships.
Buried among the tax records are a handful of the more ordinary kinds of vital records and census reports. And, here again, we find a very interesting probate record with the last will and testament of Amadeus Brooks. Here is a summary.
Other than his birth year (1786), nothing is known about his childhood until he shows up at age 18 as a farmer in Mesopatamia. He married Helena Sperry in 1806 and they had two daughters, Hellena and Martha,
tbc
