Elizabeth Brown Brooks (1901-1994) oral history: Wilmette Public Library Local History Collection

Elizabeth Brown Brooks (1901-1994) oral history

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 RA: State your name and where you live. 

EBB: My name is Elizabeth Brown Brooks and at present I live at 1136 Greenleaf Avenue in Wilmette. Formerly I lived at, for many years, at 738 Eleventh Street in Wilmette, but I was born at about 1105 or 1107 Central Avenue where there is at present a store named "Jack and June". But I was born in a house that stood on that land. The house in which I was born now stands at the south--east corner of Greenleaf Avenue and Eleventh Street. My parents were John Melville Brown and Lillian Crocker Brown. It might be of interest to know that my father came to Wilmette in 1868. At that time he was five years old. His parents had brought him from Nova Scotia, first to Evanston, where they lived for two years, then to Wilmette. And my mother's parents moved to Wilmette in 1892 when she was a young woman in her twenties.
 
RA: And where had they come from?
 
EBB: They came to Wilmette from the south side of Chicago, but had previously come from Union City, Michigan, to Chicago in 1881.
 
RA: Crocker is an early Eastern name, so I assume --
 
EBB: Yes, my grandfather had been born on Cape Cod at Ostervilie (Round Barn Farm, W. Barnstable). But he had come out to Michigan as a young man after the Civil War and had stopped in Union City, Michigan, and worked there arid at that time he had become acquainted with my mother's mother who was
 
p.2
 
then a young woman and they were married in Michigan. Now I could be tempted to go along and reminisce about her and about the missionary relatives to the Hawaiian Islands and things of that sort but I'd better stick with Wilmette.
 
RA: Well, that I'm sure would be most interesting to add. Maybe we'll do that at another time. Because I do think it is a very interesting part of your history and would be of value. But I was wondering if your Grandfather Crocker, having come from the East to Michigan might have come on a military grant. Had he been in the war? Do you know?
 
EBB: He had been in the war and he was a younger son in the family so that he was not eligible to become the head of the farm. I never heard anything about his having come on a grant, or not. I think he just simply came west, I think, to seek his fortune. And he happened when he came to this little town in Michigan to like the people there and he started working for the man who later became his fatherin- law, who was working in the mill, I think, the flour mill there. Arid later he became an inspector of flour mills all around the middle-west part of the
 
RA: Crocker Flour used to be very famous.
 
EBB: Well, I can't claim any fame that way. (giggling) And I can claim no connections with the Crockers of California.
 
RA: It would be lucrative, let's say, to claim their relationship.
 
Elizabeth Brown Brooks, p. 3
 
EBB: He came west as a poor boy and he died as a poor man, a relatively poor man. However, you might. be slightly interested in the way that he happened to come out to Wilmette, because I have just discovered a reminiscence of my mother's and in this she says that in 1890 -

Creators:

Brooks, Elizabeth Brown, 1901-1994, Interviewee

Adler, Rhea Saul, 1906-1990

, Interviewer

Media Type:

Audio

Text

Item Type:

Audiocassettes

Description:

Interview with Elizabeth Brown Brooks by Rhea Adler in Wilmette, Illinois, Spring, 1979.

ABSTRACT:

· Grandparents— Crocker, 1892/ Brown, 1868

· Early childhood- schools- churches
· Dedication of Sanitary District Canal and creation of (Washington) Gillson
Park from dredgings

· New Trier faculty- 1914-1918; activities

· Village businesses: Smith’s Grocery; Mueller’s Meat Market; Van Dusen’s
Grocery; Cramer’s Dry Goods; Green’s; Martin Jacobson, plumber;
Snyder’s Drug; “The Hall”; Wilson’s Bakery

· Brown Building built 1909; Masonic Hall on third floor

· Grandfather Brown blinded 1870- carpenter

· Melville Brown’s business life in Chicago

· Allen Family- Rodney
· World War I— Wilmette activities— Red Cross entertainment of Ft.
Sheridan and Great Lakes men; via North Shore Railroad

· Woman’s Club first President Mrs. Leonard; Reading club; Miss Ida and
Anna Law and Wilmette Library beginning

· Edwin and Horace Drury

· Louis K. Gillson family, Grace and Marjorie Stewart

Date of Original:

1979

Subject(s):

Oral histories
Brooks, Elizabeth Brown, 1901-1994

Local identifier:

R 977.31 KI

Language of Item:

English

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