Captain William Brooke

GENERAL WILLIAM BROOKE (1746-1829)

Compiled by Richard D. Kerr

[The following is excerpted from Biographical Annals of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, Elwood

Roberts (editor), published by T. S. Benham and Company and the Lewis Publishing Company, 1904. It is

included under the biography of Thomas Buckman.]

WILLIAM BROOKE was born in Limerick township, Montgomery county, Pennsylvania, May 12, 1746,

and was the oldest son of Matthew Brooke and Sarah Reese, and the third in descent from the emigrant

John Brooke, who with his wife came from England to take up a grant of land of seven hundred and fifty

acres purchased from William Penn in England. The vessel arrived at Philadelphia in the year 1698,

though both John Brooke and his wife died on board as she was coming up the Delaware, and were

buried at or near what is now Cooper's Point, Camden, New Jersey. His will was probated at Trenton and

is a very interesting document, and photographs have been made and are in the possession of a number

of his descendants.

At the breaking out of the Revolutionary war, General Brooke, who was then not quite thirty years of

age, volunteered his services, and was commissioned a captain in the Fourth Company, Chester County

Volunteers, on May 14, 1777, as a major in the Fourth Battalion in 1779, and as a major in the Sixth

Battalion, May 10, 1780. He also served as a major in the Fourth Regiment of Foot, containing six

hundred and seventy men, of which Lieutenant-Colonel Richard Willing was the commanding officer. It

was while serving as a captain that General Brooke had the following experience, as related by George

Smith, M. D., in his "History of Delaware County, Pennsylvania :"

"It sometimes happened that some of our military scouts were captured by the enemy, when not

sufficiently on their guard. About this period, such a party under the command of the late General

William Brooke, of Haverford, who was then a captain, were one night taking their ease at a house, late

the property of George Swain, when the house was suddenly surrounded by a larger party of the enemy.

Brooke determined not to be taken, leaped from a window and ran, but in getting over the fence into

the road found that a partial dislocation of his knee had happened. Putting his foot through the fence,

and giving his leg a quick extension, the joint was brought into a proper condition, when he hastily made

his escape."

During his absence with the army on one of the forages made into the territory surrounding

Philadelphia, while the British army were in possession of the city, his dwelling was plundered of nearly

every article of food and furniture, so that his wife, with two young children, was obliged to turn out in

the snow and seek shelter elsewhere. This outrage afterwards formed the basis of a claim against the

government, the original papers of this claim being on file at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania in a

volume of manuscript entitled "Depredations by British Army, Chester County, 1777," as follows: "An

estimate of Goods and Chattels taken and destroyed from William Brooke by the British Armies under

the command of Lord Cornwallis on the 11th of December, 1777.

Brooke, General William (1746-1829) Haverford Township Historical Society pg. 1 P.O. Box 825, Havertown PA 19083 Revised June 17, 2018

www.haverfordhistoricalsociety.org£. s. d.

Six sheep, six cows and two calves 45 15 . .

Beds, bedding and wearing apparel 100 . . . .

Household and kitchen furniture 20 . . . .

Provision and poultry 12 10 . .

Fat and store hogs 21 17 6

Two tons of hay and grain in the sheaf 10 . . . .

210 2 6

Chester S. S.:

Personally appeared before me, one of the justices, etc. for the County of Chester, William

Brooke, and on his solemn oath doth declare and say that the above amount is just and true as it stands

stated and that he hath received no part thereof.

Given under my (obliterated) the 27th of August, 1783. Jno. Bartholomew.

Endorsed on back "Haverford."

Wm. Brooke's account.”

Among said papers is the claim of John Lindsay, a son-in-law of General Brooke, who resided near him in

Haverford, for goods and chattels destroyed by the British Army on the following day 1 2th of

December, amounting to £134 3s. 6d.

General Brooke performed further special military service, as will be seen from the minutes of the

Supreme Executive Council, then sitting at Lancaster, Pennsylvania, under date of October 2, 1777, as

follows:

Ordered :—

"That Col. Evans, Col. William Evans, Col. Gibbons, Col. Thomas, Capt. Thomas Kevis, Capt.

William Brooke, Capt. Jacob Rudolph be authorized and required to collect without delay, from such of

the inhabitants of the County of Chester, as have not taken the oath of allegiance and abjuration or who

have aided or assisted the enemy. Arms and accoutrements, blankets, shoes and stockings, for the use

of the army; that they appraised the same when taken, according to their quality, allowing at the rate of

three pounds for a new single blankets, and give certificate for the same to the owner; that they called

to their aid the militia of the commonwealth, who are hereby ordered to obey and assist them in the

execution of this order, and that they deliver the same, so taken, to the order of the Clothier General, or

his Agent, with whom they are to correspond in the discharge of this business."

Official record of this is found in volume 5, page 69, Pennsylvania Archives.

For General Brooke's Revolutionary services, he was granted by congress several grants of land in

Bedford county, Pennsylvania, as follows: 400 acres, surveyed Feb. 4th, 1785, 100 acres, surveyed Jan.

24, 1783 and 200 acres, surveyed June II. of the same year.

At his home in Haverford, General Brooke possessed as an heirloom a splendid mahogany chest of

drawers, known as a high boy, and it was during one of the raids, when his house was plundered, that

the top drawer was forced open with a bayonet in the hands of a Hessian soldier, in the belief that said

chest contained treasure. This chest of drawers remained in his possession until his death in 1829, when

it passed into the possession of his son Thomas Brooke, who was the father of Mrs. Buckman, and then

in turn it passed to his son, George Brooke, Esq., of Delaware county, Pennsylvania, and at his death

some few years ago it was bought at public sale. The purchaser in turn delivered it to Benjamin Brooke,

from whom it went to Mr. Francis M. Brooke, who represented another branch of the family, and is still

in the possession of his heirs. An old "grandfather's clock" from which the leads have been taken to

Brooke, General William (1746-1829) Haverford Township Historical Society pg. 2 P.O. Box 825, Havertown PA 19083 Revised June 17, 2018

www.haverfordhistoricalsociety.orgmake into bullets, was also sold at the same time as the chest of drawers, and is now in the possession

of Mr. George Brooke Lindsay, of Chester, Pennsylvania, a lineal descendant of General William Brooke.

After the Revolution was over, General Brooke returned quietly to his plantation in Haverford to pursue

the more peaceful avocation of farming, surrounded by his numerous family, until the depredations of

the British navy on our merchant ships on the high seas made it necessary that we should once more lay

aside the ploughshare for the sword, as the country was once more destined to go to war with England.

Among the first to offer their services was General Brooke, who was promptly commissioned a

brigadier-general of the Third Division of Militia, with headquarters at Chester, where the troops soon

assembled, and made every preparation to defend the shores of the Delaware against an anticipated

invasion by the British.

General Brooke's remaining years were spent at the old homestead in Haverford, which he had built and

lived in for many years prior to the Revolution, and was located at the junction of Darby and Ithan

creeks, in Chester [now Delaware] county, and the old house is still standing, though it has long since

passed out of the family and is fast going to ruin. His death occurred in 1829, at a ripe old age, and he

was buried beside his wife, who had preceded him a number of years before, at Old St. David's church at

Radnor, one of the most historic and interesting Episcopal churches in this country, and where he had

been married on June 5, 1770, to Margaret Moore, who came of a family long settled in that

neighborhood. Here also are buried besides General Brooke and his wife, among other children, his

eldest daughter, Elizabeth, and her husband George Weed, and with this old church General Brooke had

been identified nearly all his life, having served as a vestryman for many years.

The Brooke family history has been written up by Mr. Frank Brooke Evans, of Philadelphia, and shows a

connected history from the coming of the emigrant in 1698 from Huddersfield, England, where the

family had been settled since 1534, several of the children of the emigrant having remained in the old

country and leaving numerous descendants.

[The following is excerpted from History of Delaware County, Pennsylvania by George Smith M.D.,

published by Henry B. Ashmead in Philadelphia in 1862.]

WILLIAM BROOKE, one of the active participants and a Captain in the Revolutionary war, was born in

Limeric, Montgomery County, about the year 1750. He was very active in the military operations in the

neighborhood while the British army was in Philadelphia and its neighborhood. One of his daring

exploits is detailed in the general narrative contained in this volume:

It sometimes happened that some of our militia scouts were captured by the enemy,

when not sufficiently on their guard. About this period, such a party, under the

command of the late Gen. Wm. Brooke, of Haverford, who was then a captain, were one

night taking their ease in a house, late the property of George Swayne, a mile below

Darby, when the house was suddenly surrounded by a larger party of the enemy.

Brooke, determined not to be taken, leaped from a window and ran, but in getting over

the fence into the road, found that a partial dislocation of his knee, to which he was

subject, had happened. Putting his foot through the fence, and giving his leg a quick

extension, the joint was brought into a proper condition, when he hastily made his

escape.