Mrs. Brooks 1884-1925

There is precious little information available about Anna E. Brooks beyond the fact that my grandparents thought she was the best teacher Pacific County ever had. Considering that the six H.A. Espy children who reached school age attended the one-room Oysterville School, I consider Mrs. Brooks more than eligible to be included among the memorable characters of Pacific County.

She and her husband, John, and their two boys, Phillip and Russell, lived in Ocean Park near the present-day fire station. Their house, still referred to by our oldest community members as the Brooks’ House, was built around 1900 by one of the Matthews men — perhaps by S.A. Matthews, himself, who built a good number of the early cottages and craftsmen-style houses in Ocean Park.

John Brooks was a traveling salesman and so it happened that when the “mysterious tragedy at Sprague’s Hole” occurred on Thursday, April 5, 1912, he was not at home. That was the day that the older Brooks boy, 10-year-old Phillip, drowned along with Victor Slingerland and Lester Young, both 12 years of age. It was supposed that the boys stopped to play in a boat on their way home from school in Nahcotta, though no one ever knew for sure what happened. There were no witnesses. Ironically, Mrs. Brooks was teaching at the one-room Nahcotta School that year and all three boys, including her son, were her students.

According to a report in the Ilwaco Tribune, “Mr. Brooks was privileged to be at home in the sad bereavement, he having been located stopping at the Hotel Perkins in Portland, and informed about 2 a.m. Friday of the irreparable loss. He arrived home on Saturday morning’s train. Mr. Brooks and wife and family are naturally very much broken up over the sad event and have the sympathy of the entire community.”

Of Mrs. Brook’s younger son, Russell, little is known. My uncle Willard Espy remembered him because, although he was several years older than Willard, they were both in first grade together in 1916. Sixty-some years later, Willard recalled that Russell was “different” and that after Mrs. Brooks died, he was “looked after” by a friend of the family. Later, “when he became too difficult,” Willard said, “Russell was institutionalized.”

As for Mrs. Brooks, my mother and her siblings remembered that she had a beautiful soprano voice and, at the community Christmas programs, she sang duets in harmony with their own mother’s lovely contralto. The only other “fact” we have about Mrs. Brooks is documented in an old photo album and concerns her height. Like other teachers of that era, she belonged to the Oysterville Sewing Bee and in a picture taken in 1916, she is standing next to my five-foot-two grandmother who comes scarcely to Mrs. Brooks’ shoulder. Anna Brooks was the tallest woman in the group.

By the time my mother was ready for the eighth grade in 1923, Mrs. Brooks was again teaching at Nahcotta. “My two older brothers had both been her students in Oysterville and the folks thought she was by far the best teacher in the county,” Mom would say. “They must have thought that I would have trouble passing that dreaded eighth-grade exam if I was taught by anyone else. So, instead of attending school in Oysterville for my final year of grammar school, I rode my horse the four miles from Oysterville to Nahcotta every morning if it wasn’t too stormy.

“At school, I’d take off the bridle and hang it in the cloak room (there was no saddle to worry about as my father thought them dangerous for children), I’d give the horse a slap so he’d go home and then, in the afternoon, I’d catch a ride back to Oysterville on Mr. Lehman’s mail wagon. On rainy days I’d have to leave an hour earlier to go with Willard and Ed in the Model T, which they drove to get to high school in Ilwaco. (There was no school bus in those days.) I’d spend that extra hour with our friend Deane Nelson, who worked at the store in Nahcotta.”

Mom passed her eighth-grade exam without incident and went on to graduate from high school and from the University of Redlands. Mrs. Brooks always got all the credit!

One further mystery is associated with Anna Brooks. She died in 1925, of cancer my grandmother thought. According to her death certificate, she was married to John Brooks but no son Russell is mentioned. On the other hand, her obituary lists Russell as her sole survivor — no mention of husband John. There seem to be no clear answers to most of the questions about the Anna Brooks and her family.