Bernard Knowles Brook

Hi Edward, Bernard Knowles Brook was my great-great grandfather. His son, ‘Matthew Moorhouse Brook, born 1874, married my grandmother in 1901. On a visit to Goole in 2008, my father discovered that Bernard and his other son, George William Brook, drowned in a tragic boating accident. They were in a small boat tied to the ‘Eagle’. Apparently Matthew and his mother (and possibly your great-grandmother, Lydia) watched this tragedy from the deck of the larger boat. Bernard was a tall man with red hair and a beard it seems. His parents were George Brook and Mary Knowles. He was born in Castleford, Yorkshire, in December 1842, and died in Keadby on 9th July 1876. A woman in Barga, Garfagnano, Italy, has a painting of Bernard which has been in her family home since 1940. The inscription on the back describes the tragic drowning incident in 1876. I visited the woman with my Dad in 2012. While we were able to photograph the painting, she was not willing to let with it. My father passed away in 2014 and we were never able to trace further information about my great-grandfather, Matthew Moorhouse Brook, who disappeared it seems in around 1905, when my grandmother was only a baby and my great-uncle was only 1. If you or anyone have further information about Matthew Morehouse Brook, I’d love to hear it. Interestingly, someone called Sharon Wilson from Canada, contacted me only yesterday via Ancestry.com as we had been connected via a DNA test. It seems she is my third cousin and her great-grandmother was your grandmother, Lydia Brook. She would be your cousin as well. Do let me know if you see this. Many thanks, Sarah