Medford Historical Society Papers, Volume 30.

[p. 14] the blood ran true to form, for the grandchildren of Cotton Brown Brooks included Phillips Brooks, Bishop of Massachusetts, and his three brothers, all likewise Episcopal clergymen. It was heroic and consecrated inheritance.

The second son of the Rev. Edward Brooks was the well-known Peter Chardon Brooks. The era in which Mr. Brooks lived corresponded more or less exactly with growth of New England in mercantile and manufacturing interests. The same year that little Peter was watching the shining bayonets from the garret window of his home, the home of his future wife, Ann Gorham, in Charlestown, was burned to the ground during the battle of Bunker hill. His life may be called the romance of commerce. He writes in his biography that he may be said to have begun life without a dollar. He died possessing the largest fortune that had ever been left by any individual at that time in Boston. With that he always said that he never tried or expected to get more than six per cent on an investment. He abstained as a rule from speculative investments and he never borrowed. What he could not compass by present means was to him interdicted. One feels that the stern Puritan spirit of father and ancestors spoke in this man also. One wonders how, with such conservative principles, he accumulated his fortune. ‘When I came to Boston in 1782,’ he writes, ‘the country was wretchedly poor. It was the last year of the war; peace was declared in State street in January, 1783, about a month after I came. My father had died the year before, my mother was left with her four children with nothing but the farm of little more than one hundred acres, and on this some debts were due and so remained until I was able to pay them. We had to struggle through as well as we could. No woman could have done better, if so well, as my good mother. She was a rare manager. She insisted on our grappling on without selling an acre. She had the pride that was a virtue. Happily she lived to reap the good effects of ’