A Veteran Preacher

The following article f rom the pen o the Hon. Geo. C. Bates, will be read with interest by those who were acquaintec with the late Rev. John Wesley Brooks John Wesley Brooks, Priscilla Brooks Barbara Allen Brooks, Elizabeth Brooks Nathaniel Brooks and their mother, dear " old maramy" Brooks, were bought a public auotion by my father at an execu tion sale vs. one of the rascally Marylam Dorseys in Ontario, N. Y., before my birth; about the year 1811, or rather, the mother was, with the then living chil dren sold, while the others were all born slaves at our old home in Ontario county where their mother remained as a slave under our old roof, on a farm of 416 acres purchased by my grandfather at 16 cents per acre from Phelps and Gorham in the year 1781, and these slaves were al cared for, treated and educated just in the same manner as our mother's ohil dren. Under the constitution of 1821 of New York, all slaves in that state were manumitted, the boys at 25, the girls at 21 and all children, born of slave mothers thereafter, were free, so that the three eldest children of this family were manumitted, the boys at 25 and the girls ai 21, and the two youngest were born free, but they lived in our family until they were old enough to earn their own living. The subject of this sketch, "The Rev. John Wesley Brooks," became free in 1828, at the age of 25, and my father then gave him $160 in cash, a yoke of cattle, a wagon and entire outfit, with which he went to Ypsilanti, Washtenaw county, Mich., and there he entered eighty acres of government land and made a auperb farm, on which he lived for many years, preaching every Sunday in the Methodist church, and working intelligibly week days, for he was an eloquent preacher snd a thorough-going farmer. During his boyhood he and his sisters attended the same common schools each winter, as did my brothers and myself, and so the colored children aoquired a good common school education, so that they could all read, write and had the elementary knowledge of common achool scholars of that day. John Wesley was a man of remarkable physical and moral power, and so he used to exhort and pray with wonderful effect upon his auditor ; and, having no fingers on his left hand, he still was a marvelous horse-tamer, that could, by the whigpering procesa, handle and tame the wildest horses, and completely subdue them, like the great horBe-tamer, Rarey of Ohio. During our early days in Detroit, in 1835, John A. Welles, John Ohester, James A. Annstrong, Benj. Townsend, Lieut. Alexander Center, George B. Martin and Dr. Lucius Abbott and the writer hereof formed a bachelor's club, and down on River street, on the " Baker farm," we Kept bachelor s hall, in Dr. Abbott s new house, and the Bev. John Wesley Brooks and his wife were onr housekeepers, while he used to pray and preach for us on Sundays, and on week days he and his wife gave us the finest cooking and the best regulated household in Detroit in that early day, now 47 years ago. Towards early spring we had a row, and decided to break up, so we all undertook that Sunday night to eat up and drink np everything in that bachelors' hall. Toward morning, when " the wine and the wassail " was at its loudest, our colored teacher with his wife came into the room and respectfully asked if he might have prayers, and then and there, all of us kneeling together, he gave one of the most pathetic, touching and eloquent prayers against wine bibbing, gambling and fashionable dissipation that was ever listened to by white gentlemen in our condition; and nlthough almost 50 years have elapsed sinoe that night, and all my companions save Geo. B. Martin are dead, I remember it as one of the few sermona composed of wordg fitly spoken, like " apples of silver set in pictures of gold." During all hig long life, tilia colored man, this ex-slave, the Kev. John Wesley Brooks, has diacharge J faithfully hig duties as a man and a Christian, and has illustrated that beautiful mandate of Christ - "Do unto others as ye would they should do unto you." If the numberlesB students of our grand university at Ann Arbor will but heed bis teachings and follow his example then will Michigan indeed blooni and blossom as the rose.