From the archives” The Walker Brooke House

The Walker Brooke House-

This two-story house was built on the southeast corner of Cherry and South streets most likely by Walker Brooke. Brooke was born on Christmas Day in 1813 in Virginia. He graduated with a law degree from the University of Virginia in 1835 and was admitted to the bar in 1838. He moved to Kentucky to teach school for two years and then heard of the opportunities that Mississippi provided and he moved to Holmes County, Mississippi to practice law. In 1840, he married Jane Eskridge and they would have ten children. He was elected to the Mississippi House of Representatives in1848 and to the Mississippi Senate in 1850 and 1852. On February 18, 1852, he was elected as a Whig to the U.S. Senate to fill the vacancy left by Henry S. Foote, who was elected governor of the Mississippi. Brooke did not seek reelection, but instead moved to Vicksburg in 1857 to practice law. It was most likely at this time that Brooke built the house on Cherry Street. He owned two additional lots to the south of this property on Cherry Street, which he sold in 1860.

In 1857, Brooke was the editorial chair for the Vicksburg Whig newspaper in addition to his operating his practice- Brooke and Smedes. Brooke was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention in 1861 and was elected to the Provisional Congress of the Confederate States from Mississippi in 1861, serving one year. After the war, in February 1866, Brooke ran the following ad in the newspaper “A meeting will be held this afternoon, at 3 o’clock, at the office of Hon. Walker Brooke over the store of Messrs Smith and Parsons, for the purpose of organizing a historical society for Warren County, for the collection and preservation of the records, both civil and military, of the sons of this county during the past five years. Every citizen of Warren County who served in the army or in the civil departments, is invited to attend.

Brooke met an untimely death three years later while he was eating at the “Bank Saloon” (operated by F. Piazza) on the corner of Washington and Crawford streets at 3:15 as reported by the Vicksburg Herald, “In endeavoring to swallow an oyster of unusual size it lodged in his throat, and in an effort to expel it a portion of it was drawn into the trachea, which of course produced almost instant suffocation. A physician was summoned as early as possible and Dr. F. T. Henry was the first to reach Col. Brooke. Dr. Henry made an attempt to remove the oyster by thrusting his fingers into the point of its lodgment through the mouth. Being unable to accomplish this as he desired, and feeling assured that death would be the result of delay, he immediately opened the trachea with a knife and inserting his finger in the incision he forced the obstructing substance back into the mouth, and then endeavored to seize and extract it from there. In this he failed but succeeded in forcing it into the esophagus. This was the immediate cause of this unfortunate and greatly deplored accident removed. But the protracted continuance of Col Brooke in this suffocated condition had produced effusion of blood upon the brain.” The article continued to record the events of the afternoon including the arrival of five other doctors. Brooke was eventually taken to his home where he died.
Brooke’s eulogy by the Herald took up nearly a quarter of a page in the newspaper and included the passages, “His examinations of witnesses were equally remarkable. He had a clear, strong, logical and analytical mind, a fine perception of the relations of cause and effect, and a forcible manner of delivery. Of money he never knew its value, and never cared to learn; in fact, he did not believe it had a say. He was very generous—simple in his manners and cordial and kind in his greeting; there was something true and great in everything he did; there was nothing little about him. To-day the mother-Mississippi, claims the proudly adopted child; and a more noble, true or generous man than Hon. Walker Brooke, will never ‘hallow a grave’ in Warren.” Brooke’s funeral procession, which left from the Presbyterian Church at 11:00 on February 21, 1869, was announced in the Herald by James T. Coleman, chairman of the Committee of Arrangements, so that all would know how to line-up and was as follows: “1st music, 2nd masonic fraternity, 3rd officiating clergy, 4th hearse, 5th pall bearers, 6th family of the deceased, 7th Odd Fellows, 8th firemen, 9th city officials, 10th members of the bar, 11th citizens in carriages, 12th citizens on horseback.” The Walker Brooke house was torn down to make way for the building of the First Presbyterian Church in 1908.