The original land grant to the Brooks family, November 24th, 1783

BROOKS COMES TO THE OHIO RIVER VALLEY

Joseph Brooks and his young family came down the Ohio River in 1779 and settled in this area that today is known as Brooks, Kentucky.  Kentucky was not yet a state and Bullitt County was not yet a county.  Little settlement existed west of the Allegany Mountains.  Only one year earlier in 1778 had George Rogers Clark’s small group of settlers camped on Corn Island to form the bare beginnings of Louisville, Kentucky.  The country was wild.  Indians and the settlers clashed often in the early days.  Surveyor John Floyd was killed here crossing Brooks Run.  The First Attorney General of Kentucky, Walker Daniel, was killed here as he approached Brooks Station.

The Brooks owned and operated a fortification known as Brooks Station along the Wilderness Trail (now Blue Lick Road, across from the Jewish Hospital in Bullitt County).  Brooks Station was the last stop on the Trail for settlers heading west out of Virginia before they made it to Louisville, Kentucky.

THE BROOKS FAMILY PLANTS ITS ROOTS

Early settlers to Kentucky each had individual family cemeteries.  Today over 35,000 small family cemeteries exist scattered all over Kentucky as the sacred burial grounds of those early families.  The Brooks’ family cemetery lay not far from Brooks Station and has since been relocated.

In the second half of the 1800’s as the communities grew, the individual family cemeteries were replaced by neighborhood community cemeteries.  The Brooks family was instrumental in the creation of Hebron Cemetery in 1894 as the  neighborhood’s new cemetery.  Solomon Neill Brooks II laid off the first section of Hebron Cemetery and served as its volunteer Superintendent for the remainder of his life. Several generations of the Brooks family since, with the help of a neighborhood Board of Directors, continued to manage and operate Hebron Cemetery for the last one hundred (100) years.

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Brookland Cemetery continues the strong Brooks tradition.

A NEW GENERATION

In 1986, with Hebron Cemetery filling up in the foreseeable future, the Brooks family zoned the remainder of the historic Brooks property across the road from Hebron Cemetery to become Brookland Cemetery.  Many of the same families share generations of loved ones buried in both Hebron Cemetery and now the newer generations are buried in Brookland Cemetery.  As the neighborhood’s growth has rapidly accelerated in recent years, the Brooks family has buried almost as many loved ones of families in Brookland Cemetery as it did in Hebron Cemetery the one hundred years before the creation of Brookland .

Since the Brooks’ coming to this area 230 years ago, operating a cemetery for its neighbors and loved ones has been an inescapable way of life.  Brookland Cemetery is proud to continue that tradition.  As the families in the community grow and themselves enjoy large families and multiple generations, the landscaped grounds of Brookland Cemetery grow to include their needs.