An effective staunch Whig, from inside the he went (unsuccessfully) to help you depict the latest Middlesex Area in the usa Congress

The guy educated Sunday school from the Earliest Parish, are toastmaster during the annual restaurants of the Middlesex Farming Neighborhood, and you can offered in his work environment a welcoming location for each other talk and you can business

Because a party, the fresh Whigs compared this new extension away from slavery into the free territory. Nathan Brooks’s feedback on the slavery were both in keeping with his party’s stance and you can quietly supportive of abolitionism away from their spouse, Mary Merrick Brooks, whom added this new Concord Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Area and you will are a member and you can friend regarding William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips. Even though their unique husband’s popular public standing prevented his overt wedding into the dishonestly helping runaway slaves, the guy subtly offered their unique perform.

As well as Samuel Hoar, Abiel Heywood, Josiah Davis, and you can William Whiting, Nathan Brooks try one of the amazing people of the Concord Academy, an exclusive school established in 1822 locally of your Brooks household. Their child Caroline and you will child George attended the newest Academy.

Nathan Brooks try a member of this new Public Circle-in Concord. He belonged in order to Concord’s governing group. But, he had been enjoyed and you can known by very humble including the fresh new wealthy. By the most of the profile, he had been a fair-inclined people, diligent, pleasantly social, even-tempered, that have a sense of laughs. He had been a great neighbors and an excellent lawyer.

The guy supported to the County Panel on the County out of Middlesex, as a representative into Massachusetts General Legal, your state senator, and a person in the new governor’s council

Range and articles: Files, 1666-1917, recording new elite group, company, and private longevity of nineteenth-century Concord attorneys Nathan Brooks, their part into the Middlesex Condition judge system, with his invest the brand new public, monetary, and political longevity of area, state, and you can county. Brand new range falls out light into economic and legal affairs out of Brooks’s members, particularly the a property and economic transactions of these to possess exactly who he had been property officer or executor. The official, industrial, and financial lifetime of Abel Moore is especially really-depicted. (Brooks is actually executor towards the estate regarding Moore, who was Middlesex County deputy sheriff and deputy jailer and you can a great effective real estate trader and you will broker within the standing and slashed timber.) The business, cash, and you can engagements during the Sc and you may Concord off supplier Tilly Merrick, Brooks’s father-in-rules, try recorded from inside the great depth. Areas of brand new life, economic factors, and you will items regarding members of new longer Brooks household members (and Nathan Brooks’s brother Franklin) and of some Merrick and you can Minot inside-rules (among them Tilly Merrick’s sis Augustus and you may son Augustus) are reported. The new paperwork were situation produced by Brooks’s spouse Mary Merrick Brooks, their child Caroline (later on Mrs. Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar), his son George, and George’s next partner, Brooks.

Brand new papers Nathan Brooks deserted on their dying decorate a vivid and you may state-of-the-art picture of the nation occupied of the affluent away from Concord (including, Reuben Brownish, Abel Moore, and Daniel Shattuck), those on the margins regarding financial life (people in brand new town’s black parents-Garrison, Robbins, and you may Hutchinson-and you will Irish immigrants), those who suffered from monetary reverse, and you will Transcendental article authors Emerson, Thoreau, and you may Alcott as well. Nonetheless they reveal the latest transience from private prosperity additionally the large-bequeath incidence off obligations and you will insolvency inside span of Brooks’s occupation. Concord historian Ruth Robinson Wheeler, which preliminarily processed such papers, expressed frustration that they contains absolutely nothing information about the new societal existence off Concord or around Brooks’s private lifestyle, but that evaluation is not exact. Both the elite and private elements of the latest collection include multiple records you to individually and collectively reveal the information off 19th-century Concord social and monetary record. Moreover, Brooks’s economic and personal papers render sufficient advice to support a full-size biography regarding your.