Erastus Brooks
Erastus Brooks (January 31, 1815 – November 25, 1886) was an American newspaper editor and politician from New York.
Life
He was born on January 31, 1815, in
He attended Brown University for two years, at the same time working as a printer to support himself and pay for tuition, but due to his financial distress did not graduate. He then taught school in Haverhill, Massachusetts, where he became editor of the Haverhill Gazette in June 1835. In 1836, his brother James Brooks (1810–1873) was one of the founders of the New York Daily Express and Erastus wrote articles and editorials for the paper.
In 1836, he went to Washington, D.C. as a special
On January 12, 1844, he married Margaret Dawes Cranch (1819–1895), daughter of Chief Judge William Cranch (1769–1855), and they had seven children.
Erastus Brooks was a member of the New York State Senate (6th D.), first elected as a Whig, from 1854 to 1857, sitting in the 77th, 78th, 79th and 80th New York State Legislatures.
He was a delegate to the
At the 1856 New York state election, he ran on the American Party ticket for Governor of New York, but was defeated by Republican John A. King.
Brooks was a delegate to the Constitutional Union national convention of 1860 in Baltimore which nominated the John Bell/Edward Everett ticket for the 1860 United States presidential election.
He was a member of the New York State Assembly (Richmond Co.) in 1878, 1879, 1881, 1882 and 1883. He was the Democratic minority candidate for Speaker in 1878, 1879 and 1881; and Permanent Chairman of the Democratic state convention of 1881.
Brooks was one of the first trustees of Cornell University. Brooks lived the furthest from the campus of the original trustees, but he never during his twenty years as a trustee was absent from one of its meetings.
He died on November 25, 1886, in West New Brighton, Staten Island, of "inflammation of the bladder, pleurisy, and pneumonia,"[1] and was buried at the Moravian Cemetery in New Dorp, Staten Island.
Sources
- ^ A VETERAN EDITOR GONE; ERASTUS BROOKS DEAD AT HIS STATEN ISLAND HOME in The New York Times on November 26, 1886
External links
Media related to Erastus Brooks at Wikimedia Commons
- The New York Civil List compiled by Franklin Benjamin Hough (pages 137 and 139; Weed, Parsons and Co., 1858)
- The Star of the West by Anna Ella carroll (Boston, 1856; pg. 161ff, bio and portrait)
- The Sheffield shipwreck at RootsWeb