NATIONAL ACADEMY BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS VOL. VII 



both of his grandmothers having been cousins of the name of 

 Keith, and descended from the Rev. James Keith, who came 

 from Scotland to Boston in 1662, and became the first settled 

 minister of Bridgewater, Massachusetts. 



Although the genealogy of Professor Brooks is thus known 

 for eight generations, the characteristics of his ancestors are 

 not sufficiently well known to justify an attempt to study his 

 heredity. Most of his immediate ancestors in this country 

 were farmers, but his maternal grandfather, the Rev. Phineas 

 Kingsley, was a Congregational clergyman. He had only a 

 common-school education, and had studied theology under a 

 local clergyman, but he was a studious, well-informed man ; 

 he had a fund of knowledge about animals and plants, derived 

 from his own observations, rather than from reading, and it is 

 not improbable that his conversation and example may have 

 turned his grandson's attention to the study of living things.* 



William Keith Brooks, the subject of this memoir, was the 

 second son of Oliver Allen and Ellenora (Kingsley) Brooks. 

 He had three brothers, all of whom survive him; the oldest, 

 Oliver Kingsley Brooks, born May 21, 1845; the third son, 

 Charles Ernest Brooks, born March 30, 1851 ; the youngest, 

 Edward Howard Brooks, born November 21, 1854. 



Professor Brooks married, on June 13, 1878, Amelia Kathe- 

 rine Schultz, daughter of Edward Thomas Schultz and Susan 

 Rebecca (Martin) Schultz, of Baltimore. To them two chil- 

 dren were born, Charles Edward Brooks, August 26, 1879, and 

 Manetta White Brooks, April 21, 1881 ; the former, after fin- 

 ishing his undergraduate course, took the degree of Ph. D. in 

 mathematics at the Johns Hopkins University, and is now 

 devoting himself to research in that subject; the latter is a 

 graduate of Yassar College, and after the death of her mother 

 in 1901, took charge of her father's home and became his daily 

 companion ; in 1909 she married J. Frank Daniel, Bruce Fellow 

 in Biology in the Johns Hopkins University. 



Professor Brooks rarely spoke of his ancestry or early life, 

 and for the following illuminating account of his boyhood, 



* William L. Kingsley, long-time Treasurer of Yale College, was a 

 cousin of Phineas Kingsley. 



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