USGENWEB PROJECT ARCHIVES: TENSAS PARISH LOUISIANA
http://files.usgwarchives.org/la/tensas/

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Hon. Clifford Cleveland Brooks, Oglethorpe Co., GA., then 
Tensas Parish, Louisiana
Submitted by Mike Miller AUG 2001



Hon. Clifford Cleveland Brooks, member of the State Senate from the 
Thirty-first District, is a cotton planter of Tensas Parish and owner 
of the Botany Bay Plantation, which is located on Lake Bruen and extends 
to the Mississippi River. This is one of the finest properties in North 
Louisiana, and is an exceedingly beautiful location, his home fronton 
the lake.

Mr. Brooks was born at Lexington, Oglethorpe county, Georgia, September 
19, 1886, and due to the strong admiration of his father for Grover 
Cleveland this son received his middle name.  His parents were George W. 
and Ida S. Briscoe Brooks, still living, his father aged seventy-one and 
his mother, sixty-two.  They represent prominent old families of 
Oglethorpe county, Georgia, coming there originally from Virginia during 
the early forties.  Mr. Brooks' only brother, Robert F., is a merchant 
and planter at the home of his father, and his only sister, Mrs. P. M. 
Marchman, also lives at Lexington, Georgia.

Clifford Cleveland Brooks was liberally educated, and intended making 
medicine his profession.  He received his Bachelor of Science degree at 
the University of Georgia in 1908, and was active in athletics and 
fraternity circles while in the University, played on the baseball team, 
and was a member of the Sigma Xu fraternity.  He also did some work 
towards a Master's degree, and planned to pursue his medical course at 
Johns Hopkins University. Baltimore.  Physicians advised him to live in 
the open for a year, after an illness, and, taking that advice, he went 
West to Pauls Valley, Oklahoma, and spent two years in the real estate 
business, and then came to Louisiana, and was a cotton broker at 
Shreveport until 1918.  Since that year he has been in Tensas Parish, 
at first a planter on the Duckpond Plantation, since 1920 has been 
proprietor of Botany Bay Plantation.

At the last election Mr. Brooks was chosen one of the state Senators 
for the Districts of East Carroll, ~ Tensas, and Concordia parishes, 
which are known as the Delta Parishes of Louisiana.  He was assigned 
duty on the committees on agriculture, land and levees, corporations, 
municipal and parochial affairs, committees on conservation, railroads, 
industries and insurance, and was chairman of the committee on public 
parks and public buildings.  He is a democrat, arid is affiliated with 
the Knights of Pythias.

Senator Brooks married January 22, 1915, Miss Lynda May Sibley, dau-
ghter of Robert J. Sibley, of Shreveport, who is a member of one of the 
oldest and most prominent families of Northwest Louisiana.  She is a 
Methodist and is active in church circles.

NOTE:  The referenced source contains a black and white photograph of 
the subject with his/her autograph.

A History of Louisiana, (vol. 2), p. 71, by Henry E. Chambers.  
Published by The American Historical Society, Inc., Chicago 
and New York, 1925.