NEWS

The Brooking Family History Society

This Society was started by a small band of enthusiasts back in 1982. They pooled their knowledge and searched high and low to find people with the name of Brooking, wrote to them and invited them to join the new Society.

The response was very positive and the Society was on its way. Its journal, The Brooking Family Historian , first appeared in spring 1983. It is still going strong and now boasts a colour front page and a very professional look.

It became clear at an early stage that South Devon was the Brooking heartland and there are still a fair number of people with that name living there. But many left and the membership of the Society, now numbering more than 250, mirrors that, with a large contingent in the USA and many members in Australia and New Zealand as well as a number of other countries, not all of them English-speaking ones, like France.

Every Society must hold an AGM and the Society's bi-annual AGM and Reunion weekends in Devon soon became popular social gatherings, more often than not with overseas members attending. It is always a pleasure to welcome cousins who have travelled a long way to attend, this year from the USA, Australia and France. In intervening years the Reunion and AGMs are one-day affairs, held in various locations in the UK; next year's will be held just outside Winchester.

This year it's the turn of Devon, on 16-18 May, and the choice was Kingsbridge because it's close to a large concentration of Brookings and has not been visited before by the Society. The venue for most events will be the Crabshell Inn. Members will be gathering there for an informal dinner together on the Friday evening; on Saturday morning a reception by the Mayor will be followed by lunch (this year a buffet lunch arranged by Jean Brooking at Stokenham), then a talk on ‘Brookings around the World' and a walk in Brooking Wood at Stokenham. Dinner in the evening at the Inn will provide an opportunity to meet, mix and talk, re-new friendships and listen to some short speeches.

On the Sunday morning there is usually a talk on a local subject connected with the Brooking family in the wider sense. This year Jill Drysdale will be speaking on Victorian Plymouth; the AGM, with reports on the Society's progress, will be after lunch; all of this will take place at the Inn.

Society membership is open to anyone interested in the name Brooking, Brookings or any of the many variations of the spelling. The Society is trying to link a number of seemingly unrelated families and has made extensive use of DNA testing with useful results. A lot of research is going on into various lines and people. Among the better-known present and past Brookings are the ex-West Ham player Sir Trevor Brooking and the leading 18 th century marine artist Charles Brooking. All research is eventually published in The Historian or in the American Brooking Society's The Brooking Line .

The Society also has hundreds of family trees, a large archive and a library which includes mainly books written by and about people with the name of Brooking or their spouses, including not only local Devon writers like Joshua Brooking Rowe but also people on female lines like Barbara Blackburn and Ann Bridge.

The Society is still run by enthusiasts and welcomes as members anyone who shares our interests. Learn more about the Society by going to www.brookingsociety.org.uk or by contacting Mary Logan, 22 Parkside Drive, Exmouth, EX8 4LB.