Brooks, Cora O.

Cora O. Brooks (1872-1951)

Keene, NH

In 1910, 32-year old Cora O. Brooks of Maryland was working as a domestic servant within the Renouff household at 65 Roxbury Street in Keene. Brooks was identified in the 1910 US Census as a single, mulatto woman who could read and write. At the time of her employment, other servants also lived and worked for the Renouff family including Emmanuel Lopez of Jamaica and Mary Kepple of Ireland.

Cora Brooks was born in March 1872 in Petersville, MD, to William and Virginia Brooks. Her father worked as an engineer at a distillery, allowing her and her siblings to attend school. Cora’s brothers and sisters included Edward, John W., and Helen A. Brooks. The children were all identified in census records as “mulatto.”

By her late teen years, Cora Brooks was already working as a domestic servant to white families in Baltimore. The 1900 census finds Cora working for Edward Mellon’s family, a retired physician. At some point within the next decade, she relocated to southwest New Hampshire to work for retired physician Edward A. Renouff. While residing with the Renouffs, Cora worked a second job as a waitress in downtown Keene between 1911 and 1913.

On October 17, 1914, the Frederick, MD, newspaper reported that Cora O. Brooks had received a marriage license to marry 39-year old John H. Warfield, a person of color from Detroit, MI. There’s no evidence that the marriage prevailed. The next primary sources related to Brooks’ life are her death record and death notice in the newspaper. Both list her has having died on November 12, 1951 in Petersville, MD, at the age of 79 years. She was a trustee of the Bethel Methodist Epliscopal Zion Church and buried in the Union Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Cemetery.