Brooks, Markell Conley, 1899-1971.

Markell Conley Brooks (1899-1971) was a daughter of John Thomas Conley and Grace Hawkins Flower. She married Minnesota lumberman Edward Brooks (1888-1954) on April 5, 1920. Brooks was for many years the president of Brooks-Scanlon, Inc., Minneapolis. He was the son of Dwight Frederick Brooks and a grandson of Sheldon Brooks, of Winona County, Minnesota. Markell and Edward had four children: Conley Brooks, Edward Brooks, Jr., Anna Markell Brooks, and Dwight Frederick Brooks II. Edward Brooks Jr. was born November 8, 1922. He married Virginia Dahleen on March 23, 1957, and was a professor of classics at Macalester College, St. Paul.

Lamrock Flower emigrated from England in 1685 and settled in Hartford, Connecticut. Lamrock's son Joseph Flower moved to Feeding Hills, Massachusetts in 1752. Hananiah Brooks was born in Killingly, Connecticut, in 1758. Whipple Hawkins (b. 1787) was raised in New York State.

As Western lands were opened to settlers, the progenitor families moved to areas in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. Sometime after 1794 Hananiah Brooks moved to Ohio. The Flowers moved to Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and eventually to Minnesota. William H. Hawkins was one of the founders of Aurora, Illinois. Hananiah Brooks was among the first settlers of Conneaut, Ohio.

The Gutherz family, who had been exiled from Spain, left their more recent home in Switzerland and settled in Ohio and Tennessee. The Conley family probably left Ireland as a result of the potato famine, arriving in Wisconsin in the 1850s.

From the guide to the Genealogy files., 1835-1999 (bulk 1883-1983)., (Minnesota Historical Society)