Cowtown Life: Alvin Brooking Family, Cowtown Kansas City, Brooking Township

My great, great, great grandfather was Alvin Brooking  (1796-1857), Jackson County judge and state senator, as well as  the namesake of Brooking Township and Brooking Cemetery in Jackson County - He was referred to as "A Respected Citizen."  He arrived in Missouri from Kentucky in 1838 and moved from Clay County to Jackson County in 1839, describing his life "as a farmer [with several slaves], churchman, and politician." Alvin Brooking was one of the founding fathers and trustee of William Jewell College in Clay County, Missouri,  According to the KC Library files, "He was called 'Alvan' by his family, but his name is recorded as 'Alvin' in county and state documents." However, going back through my father's kept documents, the spellings did in fact include Alvin.  In the late 1840s, his tenure included being a Jackson County judge and state senator, and foundation of the Brooking Cemetery in the 1850s. Grandfather Brooking was rumored to have built a church in Jackson County with one of Daniel Boone's grandsons where supposedly he was to have befriended and hid Quantrill's Raiders in the church basement, who were the best-known of the pro-Confederate partisan guerrillas (also known as "bushwhackers") who fought in the American Civil War. Their leader was William Quantrill and they included Jesse James and his brother Frank. 

Round Grove Creek, Round Grove School, West Fork Baptist Church

According to Ride with GPS, the location of the Round Grove School was just off Raytown Road and 51st, which was just south of our property. This was one of the first schools in Raytown - operating in 1844 and perhaps even earlier.

The school was on the property of Grandpa Alvin Brooking, namesake of Brooking Township and Brooking Cemetery. Alvin Brooking was also one of the founders of West Fork Baptist Church, first organized church in the Raytown area and whose members were later very entangled with Quantrill's Raiders as mentioned above.

The church met in the school building on some occasions before the stone church building was finished in 1847, near present-day 61st and Woodson.

Sept 1844 Church minutes:

"It was further agreed that the next meeting should be held at the Round Grove Schoolhouse, which was located 1/2 mile northwest of Brooking Cemetery on Alvin Brooking's place, so called because a creek ran in circular shape around a dense grove of trees."

The Raytown-Westport Road followed Round Grove Creek from Raytown to the Blue River ford.

A few years later West Fork Church build a stone church at present-day 6111 Woodson Road. Stonemason for the new church? Sons or grandsons of Daniel Morgan Boone, oldest surviving son of Daniel Boone and one of the earliest Euro-American explorers and settlers in the Jackson County region. (Click link for more about Daniel Morgan Boone and his l-a-r-g-e family.) Boone and his wife Sarah are buried at the Boone-Hays Cemetery on the farm they settled at present-day 63rd Street and Prospect, KCMO.

On the "Battle of Westport Civil War History Tour" you will visit the Daniel Morgan Boone grave and a few other the other the many Boone family sites in the Kansas City area. ridewithgps.com/routes/32539984

Images:

#1 About the Round Grove School from the West Fork Baptist Church centennial history booklet.

#2 1859 West Fork Church (which replaced the 1847 the stone church - both at present-day 6111 Woodson Road)

#3. Daniel Morgan Boone Grave, 63rd & Prospect

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Morgan_

I grew up in the Alvin Brooking post-civil war home with my family until I was 6 years old. Even in the 60's, we had no indoor plumbing. We had an outhouse! I still have the original cornerstone of the house. The house was remodeled and renovated and stands today in its original location on 47th street in Raytown, Missouri.

Great Grandpa Nathaniel Rice was, I think,  either a nephew or half brother to Archibald Rice, who was the original owner and builder of the Rice-Tremonti House in Raytown, Missouri is a building from 1844. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. The house was built by Archibald and wife, Sally,  who moved to Missouri from North Carolina and started a forced-labor farm worked by enslaved people around 1836. The current Gothic Revival frame farmhouse replaced the original log house in 1844. The farm was about eight miles south of Independence along the Santa Fe Trail and became a popular stop for travelers. Archibald died in 1849 and his son Elihu Coffee Rice became the owner. In 1850, Elihu married Catherine "Kitty" Stoner White. Kitty enslaved Sophia White, who accompanied her and lived in a cabin near the home's back door. "Aunt Sophie" remained with the family until shortly before her death in 1896.

As slave-holding southern sympathizers, Rice and his family moved to Texas during the Civil War. For unknown reasons, the house was not destroyed under General Order No. 11. It is believed to be the oldest surviving frame building remaining in Jackson County.

In 1929 the house was bought by Dr. Louis G. Tremonti and his wife Lois Gloria, who sold the house to the Friends of the Rice-Tremonti Home Association in 1988. The association has restored the home and holds open houses for visitors. The site includes several acres of land, the house, and a replica of a slave cabin referred to as Aunt Sophie's Cabin" and remains today.

The central Township was organized in 1872. The 1881 history of the county states that it ,was named in respect to the memory of Alvin Brooking, "who in his long and faithful public life was true...to every great interest of Jackson County." Brooking was State Senator from 1850 to 1854. (ATLAS JACKSON 1877, 15; HIST. JACKSON 1881, 358, 367) My grandmother's house - built by Alvin Brooking - and the one I actually grew up in until I was six years old is also still standing but was purchased and remodeled. It still sits on the old 40 hwy, known today as 47th Street in Raytown, Missouri. When my grandmother, Rena Robey, passed away, the Raytown Historical Society wanted to register and restore but fell short of funds to accomplish this. My dad and uncle George ended up selling it after she passed away. That was a very sad day.

In 1854, when Kansas was opened to Euro-American settlement, the Missouri-Kansas border became the first battlefield in the conflict in the American Civil War. My grandfather, Alvin Brooking, was believed to have sheltered William Quantrill and his "Raiders" during this time. More on that later as I research this out...

After the Civil War there was an acute shortage of beef in the northern states. Texas ranchers were burdened with five million head of cattle and no railroads on which to ship them to market. Realizing the immense profit to be made, Texas cattlemen looked for the nearest rail heads. Thus began the era of the long cattle drive and Kansas cowtowns. From 1866 to 1885 hundreds of thousands of Texas longhorns were driven annually to shipping points in Kansas. Abilene, Ellsworth, Wichita, Dodge City, and Caldwell received the major portion of the booming cattle trade. Baxter Springs, Newton, Hunnewell, Great Bend, Hays, and Junction City achieved periods of brief success.  

In 1871, the Kansas City Stockyards boomed in the West Bottoms because of their central location in the country and their proximity to trains. They became second only to Chicago's in size, and the city itself was identified with its famous Kansas City steak. In 1899, the American Hereford Association hosted a cattle judging contest in a tent in the stockyards. That event soon became the annual American Royal two-month-long livestock festival. In 1914, the city's Union Station in the West Bottoms became outdated and the new Union Station was built. My mother told me stories of how she would go down to Union Station and meet my dad and uncle coming in from Europe because they were fighting the Germans in WWII. The Kansas City Stockyards were destroyed in the Great Flood of 1951 and never fully recovered. 

Brooking Cemetery is located on the southern edge of my former families acreage in Raytown, Missouri (This area is approximately between 47th and 59th streets from Raytown Rd. to Blue Ridge Boulevard).  The land eventually was donated and helped form the Round Grove School and the West Fork Baptist Church (later renamed the First Baptist Church of Raytown) and was entered by James Kimsey from the Government, December 10, 1831. James Kimsey and his wife, Hannah Kimsey, deeded it to Alvin Brooking, April 13, 1839, “eight hundred acres, more or less,” for a consideration of $5,000.00.  Alvin Brooking died November 30, 1857, and his son, Henry C. Brooking, in accordance with grandfather's request, completed the wall and cared for the cemetery. There are twenty members of the family and two slaves buried within the enclosed plot. In later years a few friends and relatives were buried outside the family burying ground. Most of my early ancestors' graves still remain here today.

• Judge Alvin (Alvan) Brooking 1796-1857 /  Frances C. Herndon Brooking 1800–1892 (m. 1838)
•  Serena Brooking Pendleton1834–1904 / Logan Pendleton1830–1903 /
•  Lillie Lee Pendleton Rice1863–1944 / Nathaniel Rice1854–1910 
•  Rena Ann Rice Robey  1888–1977 /  George A Robey 1882–1962 (m. 1921)
• Clyde Lee Robey 1927-2009 / Mae Marie Lindstrom 1934 - 2018

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/26813876/serena-pendleton 

https://kchistory.org/islandora/object/kchistory%3A83329?solr_nav%5Bid%5D=017bab071d6b70b54241&solr_nav%5Bpage%5D=8&solr_nav%5Boffset%5D=0

Sources:

•  Ancestry.com. Web: Jackson County, Missouri, Marriage Records, 1826-2014 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2015.  https://search.ancestry.ca/cgi-bin/sse.dll?indiv=1&dbid=60383&h=1125185&tid=&pid=&queryId=8b45c0d4aa7e37c1579c752e9b157d70&usePUB=true#?_phcmd=u('https://www.ancestry.ca/search/categories/bmd_marriage/?name%3DRena_Rice%26birth%3D1891%26death%3D1936%26successSource%3DSearch%26queryId%3D8b45c0d4aa7e37c1579c752e9b157d70','successSource').
• Atchison, Anne. "Place Names Of Five West Central Counties Of Missouri." M.A. thesis., University of Missouri-Columbia, 1937. 
• A Man of Many Interests: Alvan Brooking a Respected Citizen, KC Public Library Magazine Article, https://kchistory.org/islandora/search?page=8&type=dismax&f%5B0%5D=kcpl_mods_local_subject_ms%3ASettlers%5C-%5C-Early1970.
• County Judges, https://www.jacksongov.org/592/County-Judges-1826---1922.
• County Executives, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_county_executives_of_Jackson_County,_Missouri
• Find A Grave, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/26813876/serena-pendleton
• Quantrill of Missouri: The Making of a Guerilla Warrior – Illustrated, September 1, 2003  Paul R. Petersen   
• Raytown Historical Society,  Midwest Genealogy Center, Mid-Continent Public Library, Independence, Missouri https://content.mymcpl.org/exhibits/show/raytownhistoricalsociety/item/13719 and http://raytownchamber.com/history/ 
• Roberta Bonnewitz historical research, https://www.santafetrail.org/about-us/awards/Roberta_Bonnewitz_Biography.pdf
• Rootweb http://sites.rootsweb.com/~mojackso/brookingcemetery.htm
•  The History of Jackson County, Missouri: Containing a History of the County, https://books.google.com/books?id=CH0UAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA369&lpg=PA369&dq=alvin+brooking&source=bl&ots=tS7jqg2-cw&sig=ACfU3U3Zfu4W6OaJjDov7iGmaQjDUcF9Wg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwit5LCO7crsAhXXKM0KHTVCB_QQ6AEwBnoECGIQAg#v=onepage&q=alvin%20brooking&f=false.
• The State Historical Society of Missouri, https://collections.shsmo.org/manuscripts/columbia/C2366/jackson-county.