The Brooks family traces its origins to the English county of Kent. Kent is the south-easternmost county in England, only twenty miles from the French coast across the English Channel. The name “Kent” was given by Julius Caesar during his attempted invasion of Britain in 51 BC. Once Rome abandoned Britain, the area was colonized, not by the Angles or Saxons which settled the rest of the island, but by a smaller Germanic tribe called the Jutes who were led by their mythical kings Hengist and Horsa. Kent was the first area of Britain to be Christianized when King Æthelberht was converted by the missionary work of St. Augustine of Canterbury. When William the Conqueror invaded Britain in 1066, he was hesitant to do open battle with the people of Kent and chose to negotiate for their fealty instead. William gave the people of Kent greater rights and freedoms and Kent was home to a larger freeman population than the rest of England. Kent’s county motto is “Invicta” or “Unconquered.”

John Brooks the Colonist was born in June of 1795. In 1817, he married a Kentish woman, Ann Obey, and had six known children, John the Pioneer (born in 1820), George (born in 1827, Edward (born in 1836) Celina (born in 1839), Thomas (born in 1842), and William. In the mid-nineteenth century, England was working through the changes brought by the First Industrial Revolution. New machines put men out of work. As a result, workers from England made their way to Canada. John was among them. He settled in the Toronto area in 1831 where he became a farmer in King Township Lot Six Concession Ten in the County of York. John and his wife encountered a new faith tradition in Canada. In 1840, John and Ann attended a Methodist meeting in a local schoolhouse and were brought from darkness into light. After the schism of the Methodist Church in the 1860s, the Brooks would become affiliated with the Free Methodist Church and would list their religion as “Primitive Methodist.” John the Colonist died on October 9, 1871 at age 75. The cause was described as “Homicide through Mental Derangement.” Around this time, his wife Ann was diagnosed with breast cancer. Although the cancer was removed at a cancer infirmary, it spread to other parts of her body. Ann Brooks died October 7, 1873 after much pain and suffering.

John the Pioneer was born on August 22, 1820 in Teston, England. He and his brother William were two of John the Colonist’s surviving sons. By the end of the nineteenth century, large numbers of Anglo-Saxons had settled in Canada, leading the government to begin offering land grants in forestland now cleared by the logging industry. John the Pioneer and William received land grants in a new settlement called Muskoka. On December 27, 1873, John the Pioneer took his wife, Jane Brown, his son John Henry, and three other children to Muskoka. They drove from King County to the head of Koshee Lake with a team of horses. They stayed the first night in a log shanty without doors or windows and built a fire in the corner using a caboose heater. The snow was six feet deep and they could hear the wolves howl across the lake. They stayed all winter, cleared timber and went back to the Toronto region in the spring. John again returned to Muskoka where he died on June 27, 1898.

John Henry Brooks was born in September of 1851. He married Sarah Ellis in the Toronto region, and had seven children. John began farming on the flats of the Canastoten River and had his third crop ready to harvest when a heavy rain storm flooded the river and washed out the grist mill dam above his farm. The flood washed out everything for miles along the river and John lost everything. He came to Muskoka in 1878, taking up land at the head of Riley Lake in Ryde Township where he farmed for thirteen years. John Henry moved to Bracebridge in 1891 and stayed there ten years. Sarah became ill and eventually passed in 1896. During her illness, she was cared for by Phoebe Ann Slingerland, a hunchback. 

The Slingerlands were a Dutch family whose patriarch, Teunis Cornelius Slingerland, had settled in New Netherland (New York are) in 1654. The Slingerlands were British Loyalists during the American Revolution. Richard Slingerland served with the Butler’s Rangers and had been taken prisoner by the Americans. Once the Revolution ended, the Slingerland family discovered that their farm had been plundered and decided to move to Canada to avoid harassment.

On July 13, 1898, John Henry married Phoebe Ann Slingerland and had three children: Leila, Roland, and Olive. The family bought a farm in Draper, Ontario in 1901. John Henry Brooks died on December 21, 1923 after a long illness.

Roland John Brooks was born February 18, 1902 in Muskoka. Roland’s education took him only up to the “fourth book” and he struggled with reading and writing for his whole life. Due to his advanced age, Roland’s father, John Henry was unable to be gainfully employed, so Roland left school to go to work. At the age of sixteen, Roland secured work as a teamster at a logging camp in the northern reaches of Ontario, but his work with horses agitated his asthma. He worked as the camp’s cook for a while. Roland was hard working and devoutly religious which allowed him to divert many of the problems that beset young workers in the setting of a camp such as card playing, smoking, and drinking. Asthma continued to afflict Roland who soon settled in Niagara Falls, Ontario on the advice of doctors. His mother Ann and sister Olive joined him. In 1925, Roland met Eva Gurney who was visiting from England. Eva had come from a working-class, Methodist background in Keighley, Yorkshire, England. She was named after Evangeline Booth, the daughter of Salvation Army founder William Booth, who was a family friend. Her father was a laborer and her grandfather had been a striker for a blacksmith. As a child, Eva worked in the textile mills of North Yorkshire from six in the morning to noon and would attend school in the afternoon where she received a complete public education. She intended to marry a local man but, after he was killed in the First World War, she planned to move to Australia, stopping in Canada to visit her sister in St. Catherines. During this time, she met Roland and decided to stay in Canada. Roland and Eva were married in November. Their first child, Helen, was born in 1926. Ralph was born in 1929 and Kenneth in 1934. The family lived at 1405 Cedar Street in Niagara Falls and was quarantined for a short time after they were diagnosed with Scarlet Fever. The Brooks were raised in a strict Free Methodist household. Working on the sabbath was strictly prohibited, as was the wearing of jewelry and consumption of media such as cinema. Roland had great concern for his children and grandchildren and would spend hours praying for them. Roland was a hard worker who worked multiple jobs to support his family including farming, carpentry, and greengrocing. He would say he did these jobs to “keep the wolf away from the door.” His asthma continued to bother him and prevented him from working for months at a time. He would burn Asthmador to alleviate the symptoms but did not smoke it as intended because he disliked cigarettes. Roland was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 1976. Roland said he “couldn’t wait to go home” but he did pray to be free from pain. He died painlessly on June 6, 1977. His sister Olive followed a month later and Eva on September 6, 1981.