Dear Cousins: It's time to send us updates on your family: births, marriages, deaths, we'd love to know your news!
To add info please contact Katharine Gates at kgates@brook-hill.net with subject line: BROOK HILL
Gathering this info is going to take a while, but we are hoping for 2023, the 10th anniversary of our last one.
The last of the Stewart-Peterkin line.
The Brook Hill Book is now printed and ready for our cousins "of the blood." Please contact Katharine for help with the secure family-only download of the PDF version or with information on how to order the hard copy.
The book is 80 pages long and lists all descendants of John Stewart and Mary Amanda Williamson Stewart of Brook Hill. It also provides summaries of the ancestry of the Stewart, Williamson, Pinckney, Bryan and Peterkin lines.
Our cousin Saint George Bryan, a newscaster in Oregon, recently did a story on our ancestry - apparently John Stewart was descended from Robert the Bruce, whose grandson was King of England at one point in the 1300s. See the video here: http://www.king5.com/on-tv/evening-magazine/Scottish-Roots-159581485.html
Bishop Peterkin, whose second wife was Marion Stewart (one of the 7 aunts), was the first Episcopal Bishop of West Virginia. His stately home at 1203 Ann St in Parkersburg has been lovingly renovated by its current occupants, who have also put the house on the Annual Garden Tour.
The present owner found us through this site. Isn't the digital age amazing?
After years of potholes and bumpity bumping, Brook Hill finally has a new tar-and-chip surface. Thank you again, Annie Stewart.
Brook Hill receives a new coat of paint, with colors selected by the creative eye of Joan B. Gates.
Brook Hill has experienced temperatures of up to 104 degrees this past week, in record heat. The house only has air conditioning in the bedroom, but Joan is surviving. Just imagine what it was like inside the layers and layers of petticoats and bustles the maiden aunts had to wear back in the day!
An idle afternoon Google surfing led to discoveries about the architect John Stewart hired to make additions to Brook Hill in the 1840s. Robert Mills (1781-1855) was known as "the first native-born American architect" and was also the creator of The Washington Monument in DC and Monumental Church in Richmond.
