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| Photo taken in 2011 at the Eclipse Mill, North Adams, Massachusetts. Courtesy of Derek Parker. |
"As far as my Uncle Henry nailing
his name in the floor, that sort of sounds like something he would do. He was a man with a great imagination. He always had
a mischievous glint in his eyes. He always looked like Peck's Bad Boy. He would be smiling at you like he had a secret he
wasn't telling anyone about." -Jack Brooks, nephew of Henry Brooks
HENRY BROOKS: FIRST ARTIST AT
THE ECLIPSE MILL (2011)
Do you know
what you were doing on September 1st of last year? Or on that date five years ago? Maybe not, at least without some thought.
But if someone had asked Henry Brooks what he was doing on September 1, 1923, he would have known right away, though he might
have just smiled and said, "That's a secret."
On that date, now more than 88 years ago, Henry was working for the Hoosac Cotton Company, located at the Eclipse
Mill, on Union Street in North Adams. When the boss wasn't looking, he got out a hammer and nails and spelled out his name
in the floor. It's still there, 28 years after he passed away.
When artist Eric Rudd bought and renovated the Eclipse into artists' lofts a few years ago, he saw Henry's audacious
autograph and decided to leave it there. "I saw lots of odd things like that in the building. They are part of its history,
so I kept them," he told me.
Sculptor
Derek Parker and visual artist Anne Roecklein were looking to move into one of the units this summer and saw Henry's "art
work" near the kitchen sink. They met Anne French, who was at the Mill Children exhibit at the Eclipse Mill Gallery,
and they asked her if she had any idea who Henry was. French contacted me, and pretty soon I was combing through census records
and newspaper archives. It didn't take long to track down Henry and his descendants.
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| Henry Brooks (left), brother Albert and sister Evelina, circa 1912. |
It would have been about a three-minute
walk to work for Henry the day he sort of made history. He lived with his parents in a row house at 9 Tannery Yard, just off
Union Street. It's a vacant lot today. His parents were Levi Brooks (born Onesime Rousseau, in Quebec), and New York native
Mary (Varin) Brooks. They married in 1882. Levi had immigrated to the US in 1860, and lived for more than 40 years in the
Lake Champlain area of New York. According
to the 1900 New York Census, Mr. and Mrs. Brooks were living in Bellmont, about 50 miles west of Plattsburg. They had six
children, and Levi was a "day laborer." On June 4, Henry Brooks (originally Henri or Henry Rousseau) was born in
the nearby town of Standish. Five years later, the family moved to North Adams, where they rented an apartment at 264 Beaver
Street. Levi worked at the Beaver Mill. By 1914, they had moved to 35 Union Street; two years later, they were at Tannery
Yard.
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| North Adams Transcript, August 31, 1926. Reprinted with permission. CLICK TO ENLARGE. |
On Saturday, August 28, 1926, Henry
married Agnes Antonia (Toni) Garand, of North Adams. One of her uncles, John Garand, invented the M1 rifle. Due to the unusual
circumstances, they married again on September 7, at Notre Dame Church. They moved to 6 Tannery Yard, and Henry worked for
the Boston & Maine Railroad. After renting for a while on Rand and Reed Streets, they bought a house at 135 Cliff Street,
where they made their home for the rest of their lives.
Henry worked for Berkshire Fine Spinning at the Greylock Mill in North Adams for 23 years, and at Sprague Electric
for seven years, retiring in 1965. Wife Toni died in 1970. Henry passed away on June 30, 1982, at the age of 82. They had
two children, Robert, born in 1927, and William, born in 1931. Robert, who worked for General Electric in Pittsfield, died
in 1966. William, now 80 years old, lives in Virginia. My interview with him appears on the next page.
Both
marriage certificates. The one on the right is in French and gives Henry's name as Henri Rousseau.
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| Photos and documents provided by the Brooks family, except where noted. CLICK TO ENLARGE. |
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| CLICK TO ENLARGE. |
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