428 LEADING AMERICAN MEN OF SCIENCE 



to her one of the most powerful elements that made him develop 

 as he did. Not only was she "a lady of rare qualities and keenly 

 sympathetic with her children's dispositions" so that she trained 

 him in his early years of greatest plasticity in the love of truth that 

 led him to freedom, but, it may well be that some of his best traits 

 came from the maternal side by direct inheritance. For William 

 Keith was not the only son with appreciation of the ideal and the 

 beautiful. The oldest, Oliver Kingsley Brooks, early showed an 

 aptitude for art and was one of the first students and a very pro- 

 ficient one in the Cleveland School of Art. The youngest, Edward, 

 has shown artistic ability of a high order, achieving a reputation 

 as an original designer of furniture and household decorations. 

 The subject of this sketch did not take instruction in drawing till 

 his studies in zoology led him to the need of illustrations, when 

 he received instruction from his brother Oliver, nevertheless in 

 later life so successful was he in making ink drawings of the 

 marine creatures he knew so well that a Baltimore artist judged 

 his success in life to be largely due to his artistic skill. This taste 

 for drawing came by inheritance from their mother, and as an 

 index of clear mental images this was no mean gift. Both the 

 parents of William Keith Brooks came from Vermont, and the 

 following account will show a sturdy New England ancestry. 



Prior to 1634 Thomas Brooks came from England to America 

 and settled first in Watertown and then in Concord, Massachusetts. 

 John Kingsley came from Hampshire, in England, and settled in 

 Dorchester, Massachusetts, in, or before, 1638. From these two 

 early settlers came the families that united as the parents of William 

 Keith Brooks. 



It will but emphasize his puritanical origin to enumerate the 

 ancestors whose biblical names recall ideals and training of long 

 ago. On the Brooks side the line of descent from Thomas Brooks 

 ran through Joshua, through Noah, through a second Joshua the 

 son of Noah, and through a third Joshua, who all lived in Con- 

 cord, Massachusetts. Their simple useful lives contained little 

 prophecy of the time when, in 1907, their descendant, one Wil- 

 liam Keith Brooks, LL.D., sought relief from the tedium of 



