Brookes, Iveson L., 1793-1865

Baptist clergyman and planter, of Hamburg (Aiken Co.), S.C.

Baptist minister, educator and planter; born in N.C.; plantations in Jasper and Jones counties, Ga., and Edgefield County, S.C., and elsewhere; 1819 graduate of University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; employed overseers to manage plantations while working as minister and educator, in North Carolina, and Georgia.

Baptist clergyman.

Iveson Lewis Brookes, teacher, Baptist minister, and planter, was born in Rockingham County, N.C. Brookes, a 1819 graduate of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, N.C., amassed, through marriage and purchase, considerable holdings of land and slaves in Jasper and Jones counties in Georgia and Edgefield County and other locations in South Carolina. He also worked in schools for much of his life (teacher at Greensboro Academy, Greensboro, N.C., 1819; rector of Eatonton Academy, Eatonton, Ga., 1820s; principal of Penfield Female Academy, Penfield, Ga., 1840s), employing overseers to manage his plantations while he taught and preached at various Baptist churches. He was also active in national and local Baptist affairs and was a staunch defender of slavery.

Iveson L. Brookes was a Baptist clergyman and planter, of Hamburg (Aiken County), South Carolina.

Iveson Lewis Brookes was born in Rockingham County, N.C., in 1793, one of five sons of Jonathan and Annie Lewis Brookes.

At some point, Brookes's parents moved to Caswell County, N.C. Brookes began his studies at the University of North Carolina in 1816 and received an A.B. degree in 1819. While in school, he preached in local Baptist churches, particularly at the Mount Carmel Baptist Church near Chapel Hill. After graduation, Brookes taught briefly at Greensboro Academy in Greensboro, N.C., and then, employed by the Itinerant Board of the Baptist Church, left North Carolina for a domestic mission tour through South Carolina.

In 1821, Brookes became rector of Eatonton Academy in Eatonton, Ga. On 22 September 1822, he married Lucine Walker. In 1831, their son, Walker I. Brookes, inherited plantation land and slaves in Jasper and Jones counties, Ga., from his mother's family. Brookes managed this property as guardian for his son until 1846. Sometime in early 1830s, presumably following the death of his first wife, Brookes took a second wife, Sarah J. Myers, widow of James Myers. Sarah brought to the marriage plantation property in Edgefield County, S.C. About 1831, Brookes seems to have moved to Woodville, located just outside Hamburg in Aiken County, S.C., where he lived when not visiting one or the other of his plantations.

In 1842, Brookes was named principal of the Penfield Female Academy in Penfield, Ga. By 1845, however, he was back in Woodville, contemplating opening an academy there. These plans never came to fruition, and Brookes spent the rest of his life managing various properties and preaching in various churches. His plantation holdings must have been considerable; an 1861 list includes the names of 66 slaves who appear to have been employed on one of his properties.

Brookes was active in local and national Baptist affairs and vocal in defending the institution of slavery. In 1850, he published A Defense of the South Against the Reproaches and Incroachments of the North: In Which Slavery is shown to be an Institution of God (available in the Southern Pamphlets Collection, Rare Book Collection), a pamphlet that justifies slavery on biblical grounds.

Besides his son Walker, Brookes appears to have fathered at least four daughters. Evidence of their activities is sketchy in these papers, as is information on the fate of his wives. Brookes died in 1865.