Dr. William Edward Reid of Portsmouth, Va., who died in June 1952, was responsible for much of the information concerning "The Four Rooks Sisters" and their descendants.

Negro History Bulletin, Vol. 16, No. 1 (OCTOBER, 1952), pp. 3-8 (6 pages)
Sourced from: JSTOR
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Note: This family history is longer than FB will allow us to post. We will include the link at the end of what we can post where we sourced it from so that you can continue reading it. -End note-
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In Gates County, North Carolina, there lived a white woman named Sally Rooks who bore four daughters by her father's slave.

By written and verbal record he was described as a black man of exceeding height and large stature whose name was Jacob Brady.

Their first daughter, Polly Rooks, was born in 1799 and died in 1881. After Polly, came the three other sisters, Judith, Sally and Peggy Rooks. Their probaible birth dates were 1801, 1803, and 1805. Polly Rooks, oldest of the four sisters, married David Rooks (1795-1850), a carpenter and cooper.

They had six children whose names were Joseph, Mary, Joanna, Nancy, John and James. Two of these children, James (1829-1906), a black-smith, and John (1836-1910), a carpenter, married the two Burke sisters, Elizabeth (1837-1900) and Cassandra (1840-1907).

Nancy Rooks, daughter of David and Polly, married William Burke (1820-1886) and with her infant child, died in childbirth. Then this same William Burke, incidentally the uncle of Elizabeth and Cassandra, married his deceased wife's sister, Joanna Rooks.

This union, with the eleven children born of it, was the beginning of the Burke branch of the family.

Mary Rooks, another daughter of David and Polly married Thomas Butler, blacksmith and partner of Mary's brother, James. Joseph Rooks, also son of David and Polly Rooks, married Harriet Cuff. They
had four daughters, two of whom married the half-brothers of the above mentioned Thomas Butler.

These three half-brothers, Thomas, David and Patrick Butler, began the Butler branch of the family.

All branches of the Rooks family lived in Gates County, North Carolina, which was carved from three surrounding counties in 1788 in order that the people of that section could attend a new and nearer court house without crossing the swollen Chowan river in rough and ' 'boisterous" wintry weather.

As free men and women, the members of this group were subjected to heavy taxes, unfair codes, customs and laws. It became obligatory, not only to farm industriously with wife and children, but also to work at some trade.

In this group, were spinners, weavers and dyers, seamstresses, carpenters and coopers, blacksmiths and wheelrights, brickmasons and plasterers, distillers of whiskey and brandy, saloon keepers, Innkeepers, loggers, seine fishers, shoemakers and cabinetmakers.

Judith Rooks, the second of the four sisters, married Micajah Reid ( ?-1838), a blacksmith and member of the Militia or Grand Muster in which he played in the fife and Drum Corp. Micajah Reid originally came from the southern most part of Nansemond County, Virginia, which was adjoining to the county of Gates in North Carolina.

In 1812 a law was passed to exclude from the Militia all Negřoes except those used as musicians. In Gates County, the sentiment gradually prevailed whereby even musicians of Negro heritage were no longer desired.

By word of mouth comes the description of Micajah 's
feelings and attitude on being asked to refrain from participating in all the excitement of Muster Day - that day when poor whites from the most isolated dirt-floor log cabins as well as the few pampered slave owners living in rural self-indulgence on the main road converged on that fighting, eye-ball gouging, whiskey drinking, heterogeneous throng, to hear the lusty orders of officers being executed by their soldiers in drill.

Micajah was deeply hurt on being asked to give up this phase of his citizenship. lie said, "If I have to give up my place in the Muster, there's little need to ask me to fight. Nor shall one son of mine fight either."

However his grand and great grand children have served their country during World War I and II and the Korean War. This same Micajah Reid had lived in or near sommertoli, Virginia in Nansemand County.

Sommerton was quite a trading place. The Sommertoli road was the main route used at that time to enter North Carolina from Virginia.
George Fox, the circuit-riding, Quaker minister, had used this road as he preached in and around these two states. William Byrd also used a part of this route when he surveyed the North Carolina-Virginia dividing line.
At any rate.

Micajah Heid either walked or rode down Sommertoli road when he went to Gates County. North Carolina. There in 1818 he built a home for his wife. Judith Rooks Reid, and their Children.
North Carolina was known for its mild treatment of Negroes -slave or free. Slaves from South Carolina and Virginia sought refuge in the dangerous and mysterious Dismal Swamp as did the Loyalists.

The English, Scotch-Irish, Moravians and other whites overflowed from Virginia to the lonely virgin soil of North Carolina.

William Byrd, in 1730, when surveying the North Carolina-Virginia dividing line, said, on entering the section now called Gates County,
"A good many inhabitants the expedition priest married a few people and baptised many children.

. . . The early people were for the most part very idle. They had adopted the Indian custom of letting the women do all the work in the fields while the men sat around and smoked. The people lived in loo- huts and showed no signs of being discontented with their lot.

Their only ambition was not to live in Virginia. To live in North Carolina meant less and often no tax.r?

This may have been true at that time for some people, but by 1799 when Pollv Rooks was born, neither she nor the other three Rooks sisters. their husbands nor children could ever afford to live in idleness. The men raised the wool, flax and cotton.

The women spun, dyed, wove and sewed the clothes. The men raised the large crops. The women and children cared for vegetable, herb and flower gardens. The children not only chopped in the fields and gardens, but they also took their turns at the looms.

The boys did basket weaving and rug making, then sold them for pocket money in case the money could be spared. The girls pickled, salted, preserved and learned the duties of keeping house.

The men and boys went sein-fishing in the Chowan river and brought home barrels of fish to be salted for the winter breakfasts.
They also raised rice in the marshes of the Chowan River which in some instances bordered the back or sides of their property.

Each family's property had its private burying ground. The remains of Micajah and Judith Rooks lie in the old family cemetery.

Their great-granddaughter. Hazel Reid Lock, now lives there with her husband, William I. Lock, their children, her mother and brother.
Three of Micajah and Judith's children lived to marry. They were Asbury, William and Mary Reid.

Asbury Reid (1827-1901), farmer .Justice of the Peace by popular vote and Republican politician, married Clara Ann Greene one of a large family in Gates County.

Some of the other Greenes married Butlers and Burkes thereby causing a very complicated relationship of cousins. *Micajah and Judith Rooks Reid 's other son became a minister. He
was William Reid, and he married, preached and lived in Murfreesboro, North Carolina with his wife and large family. William Reid 's sister, Mary Reid, married William Jones, a painter of Murfreesboro.

They also lived in Murfreesboro and reared ten children. Two of their daughters married back into the Burke family.
The third Rooks sister, Sally, married Jet Martin. They had several children, and one of their granddaughters, Sarah Martin, married Alonzo Greene, shoemaker, Post Master, and Innkeeper.

Alonzo Greene and his wife, Sarah Martin Greene, had one daughter named Texanna Greene Minter, and she is the only known living Descendant of the Martin branch of the family.

Mrs. Minter 's daughter, Eva, married back into the Butler-Greene branch of the family. The fourth Rooks sister was Peggy Rooks, and she married Daniel Turner.

Their son, Rooks Turner, was an early Howard graduate and served at one time as principal of Elizabeth City State College in Elizabeth City, North Carolina.

There are Turners from this branch still living, but contact has been made with only one, and he is Dr. Lorenzo Dow Turner, Professor of English at Roosevelt College, Chicago, Illinois. He has written a
book called, 1 ' Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect. ' ' It was published by the University of Chicago ; Chicago, Illinois.

The Butler, Burke, Greene, Jones, Reid and Rooks branches meet each summer in Gates County for a family reunion. Fifty members of this combined group have attended Hampton Institute, Hampton, Virginia.

The two members now attending Hampton are Doris James of the Butler-Greene branch and Duke Harrison of the Reid-Reid branch.

The first to attend Hampton was Charles A. Greene who finished in the class of 1875. Many others attended and graduated from Waters Training School or the old Winton Academy in Winton, North Carolina.

The various members attended a wide range of universities - from the University of Washington in Seattle to Sargent in Boston, Massachusetts and from the Atlanta School of Social Work in Atlanta, Georgia to the University of Chicago.

Individuals in the group began to leave Gates County when Hampton Institute spread the news of the wonderful educational opportunities available there.

About this same time work had become scarce for the large number of mechanics now trained in the group. As a result of this scarcity, whole family units moved to other counties,, states and sections of the United States.

The rise of the white artisan and mechanic pushed these families from their old homes in Gates County and scattered them up and down the Atlantic Sea Coast, towns and cities.

There are now small family units in Maine, New Orleans, Chicago, Detroit, Utah and California.

Some of the Rooks members are James Carroll Rooks, Camden, New Jersey School Principal; Ruth Rooks Chisholm, Jersey City, New Jersey, Registered Nurse ; Rev. Shelby Rooks of St. James Presbyterian Church, New York City; Lucy Rooks Hall, who with her husband Sherman Hall, operates a cleaning and pressing business in Ahoskie, North Carolina and Mr. David Rooks, who at eighty-five
still works at his blacksmith shop every day in Gates County.

From the Butler branch comes Ulysses Sē Butler and Samuel Hare who are both landowners and successful farmers in Holland, Virginia; the late William Pollard of Portsmouth, Virginia, Superintendent of the Norfolk Division of the Richmond Beneficial Life insurance Company; Walter Butler, New York City Postal Service and Julius Butler, New York Brokerage Firm Clerk.

From the Burke branch come Dr. Elihu D. Burke, Physician and staff member of the Norfolk Community Hospital, Norfolk, Virginia; Erma Burke Upshur, retired teacher of the Philadelphia school system; Mrs. Madeline Reid Broaddus of Trenton, New Jersey, former Philadelphia Department of Welfare Social Worker; Cora Reid McKerrow owner and manager of Raid's Modern Funeral Home in Boston, Massachusetts; Josephus Burke Judkins, Funeral Director of Judkins Colonial Funeral Home, Plainfield, New Jersey;

Spurgeon Burke, Manager of Carver and Slowe Halls in Washington, D. C.; and Beulah Burke, Executive Housekeeper of Lucy
Slowe Hall, Washington, D. C.

From the Greene branches were the late Charles A. Greene, Head of the Agriculture Department of Tuskegee Institute, Tuskegee, Alabama;

The late Cyrus Greene, Sr.. Executive Secretary of the Tampa Urban League. Tampa, Florida; The late Dr. Melvin Greene of New York City; and also Mrs. Esther Greene Holloman Jenkins public
school teacher of Greensboro, North Carolina and her son Dr. Leonard Holloman of California.

From the Reid branch come Naomi Reid Harrison, Dean of Women at St. Paul Polytechnic Institute, Lawrenceville, Virginia; Albert T. Reid of the University of Chicago is the recipient of a medical research fellowship granted by the Public Health Service and
recommended by the National Cancer Institute. He will investigate problems of diffusion controlled reaction in metabolizing systems;

Mrs. Charlotte Reid Rodman U. S. 0. worker in Portsmouth, Virginia ; Hazel Jennings Hagans, teacher in the State School for Deaf and Blind in Raleigh, North Carolina; Persis Jennings, Art teacher in the Norfolk Division of Virginia State College, Norfolk, Virginia ; Lucille Reid Segre ' teacher of Home Economics, Dillard University, New Orleans, Louisiana; Marion Reid, public school teacher in Baltimore,
Maryland;

Cora Mae Reid, Nursery School Teacher, Hampton Institute, Hampton, Virginia; Claudia Reid, Murfreesboro, North Carolina public school teacher; Thomas H. Reid, Sr. Portsmouth, Virginia Attorney; Dr Leon Reid, Jr., Richmond, Virginia Dentist; Dr. Fergusson Reid, St. Louis, Missouri Physician; Jacob L. Reid, Roanoke, Virginia Attorney; Dr. Albert 0. Reid, Baltimore, Maryland Dentist; Rev. Clayton Reid of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania ; William Reid, Beckley, West Virginia high school principal.

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