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George is my ancestor and I've got a fair amount on him, though not all at my fingertips.
He served in the Methodist Church as well as Methodist Episcopal, though his parents, Benjamin Brooke and Hannah Gibson, were Quakers.
George was born in Upperville, Fauquier Co., Va., around 1820.
He had a brother Benjamin F. Brooke who also converted to Methodism and became a clergyman. Rev. Benj. F. Brooke's papers are part of a special collection at the library in Winchester where he was posted for a considerable time. One anecdote from the Civil War involves Gen. T.J. Jackson, a Presbyterian, visiting Rev. B.F. Brooke's church while in Winchester and being asked to pray. This is cited in several Jackson biographies. The Brooke brothers also had a sister, Anna. Both brothers attended Dickinson College in Pennsylvania. Their father, a farmer, disapproved of their choice of profession according to Benj.'s papers.
Their parents were Pennsylvania natives and came from lines of Quakers. Both are buried at a Quaker cemetery in Loudoun, Co., Va.
George married Eliza Jane Smith, daughter of U.S. Rep. Ballard Smith, D-Va., of Greenbrier Co., Va. (now W.Va.) and Mary Gray Davis.
George's church assignments placed him in Baltimore, Md., in the 1850s and at least some of he and Eliza's children were born there. Among them were Ballard Brooke, Benjamin F. Brooke, and Mary "Mollie" Gray Brooke.
Around 1860, Rev. G.G. Brooke can be identified in Harper's Ferry, Va., (now W.Va.) which has made me wonder about whether the family was witness to the events surrounding John Brown's raid and subsequent hanging.
Young Ballard seems to have died prior to the start of the war and family seems to have relocated to Staunton around this time, in about 1861. A letter from George to Mollie seems to indicate that Benjamin also died during the period, but it's not clear whether he was in the war.
George's revival-style preaching is noted in newspaper clippings of the time period. This came to the attention of Confederate Rangers commander, Gen. Imboden, himself a Lutheran, who wished the services of a minister to improve the moral attitude of his unruly troops. In 1864, Rev. Brooke accepted an assignment as chaplain to Imboden's troops, who were apparently camped near Staunton. At least one article in the Staunton newspaper noted the highly positive effect of Brooke's ministry on the moral character of the rangers. Camp revivalism was a phenomenon in both the Confederate and Union armies.
I have tried to track George's activities following the war in the Census record with some success, but that's the part that I don't have in front of me and can't remember right now. I believe he may have died in or near Columbus, Ohio, where some family members later lived. I also seem to recall at least a family anecdote that Eliza spent some of her later years at a mental health facility (not what they would have called it then) in Richmond.
I am descended from George's daughter Mollie, who married Louis George Penn of Patrick Co., Va. Their son was George Gibson Penn (Sr.), my great-grandfather. A letter that G.G. Brooke left to Mollie describing the family's despair after the Civil War is in the possession of my elderly grandmother.
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