Step-children of James J. Witty (1845-1904)

The Brooks family as part of the Witty family

Mary Lou Cobb Brooks Witty (1844-1927) married first to James B. Brooks (1834-1879) in 1858, when she was 14 years old. 

Mary Cobb Brooks and James J. Brooks, about 1879, the year he died.

She married James J. Witty i 1884, and he died in 1904. (James Witty was my great great uncle)

"Riding Lady-like" Mary Cobb Brooks

Grandma Mary Witty, Nat, Bert, and Molly Brooks Dennis (who had 12 children)

Nat is James Nathaniel, who didn't marry. The other 4 Brooks children did marry, and had many grandchildren for Grandma Mary.

Bert, Nat, William and Grandma Mary Brooks Witty. Bert was 4 when his father died, and his next oldest sibling was 11 years older than him. He was 9 when his mother married James J. Witty.

Only the youngest of the Brooks children, Bert, was still at home with his mother when she married James Witty. 

Grandma Mary Brooks Witty

Grandma Witty and Molly Brooks Dennis

Both her oldest, William Brooks, and the next of her children, Molly Brooks Dennis, married spouses with the sur-name Dennis. But I can't find any relationship between them through the Ancestry records. At this point it looks like they had different parents.

Unfortunately, I don't have any photos of James J. Witty, or any of his family. It's pure chance that the Brooks family was interested enough in photography that this collection was made and shared. I've really enjoyed seeing these people and the way they dressed at the time.

But wait a minute. How about a story? Soon I'll share what Molly (Marry Elizabeth) Brooks Dennis, aka Mrs. J. F. Dennis wrote about her life on the frontier.