Ross Whatley Brooks

R.W. Brooks, "Ross Whatley Brooks" was born in Georgia July 4, 1832 . To avoid having to fight other family members in Georgia and Alabama who were pro-Union, he came to Texas and settled in Coleman county. A short time later he moved to Limestone County. The war caught up with him in Texas and he enlisted in Houston under Captain Evans of Company C, and trained at a camp in Galveston. He survived the war without being wounded, but he did get sick at Murfreesboro and took a two month furlough. During his furlough he stayed with family in Georgia and then returned to his unit. He was in one of the scout units that guarded the flanks and rear of the Battalion.

After the war he married Martha Clayton, a Cherokee Indian from Oklahoma, and had several children. Martha died in Pecos in 1884. Two of his children, Jeptha "Jep" Brooks and John J. Brooks were Texas Rangers in Co. F. of the Frontier Battalion under Captain Hughes. John Brooks joined the Arizona Rangers about the time the Arizona Rangers were formed under a Captain Ryning in 1901. John J. went on to become a Lt. with the Rangers in Douglas, Arizona. Ross "R.W." Brooks also joined the Arizona Rangers in 1903 at the age of 71. While in Arizona he remarried to Lola Brooks. He later became a mounted cop in Douglas, Az. where he was ambushed at the age of 75 in a railroad yard by a group of Mexicans. He was wounded in that attack and had to have a steel plate put in his head. He never completely recovered from that injury and died of dementia on December 19, 1921, age 88. He is buried at the State Mental Hospital in Phoenix. John Brooks was killed in Madera, Mexico in1910. His daughter, Minnie Brooks Watts, lived in Bisbee, Arizona for many years.