A distinguished representative of the great state of Iowa, where he was born on the Brooks farm in Keokuk County, on October 17, 1850, John Tinley Brooks, vice-president of the First National Bank of Claremont, has attained deserved prominence as a conservatively aggressive financier of the Southland, intensely interested in and willing and anxious to promote the real progress of the commonwealth. His father was John G. Brooks, who had married Miss Mary Kyger, and they were natives of Ohio. They moved from Butler County, Ohio, in 1842, to Iowa, and took up from the Government some land. It was there that the subject of this sketch was born and reared.
He attended the common schools of Iowa of his day, and later was graduated from the Iowa Wesleyan College at Mt. Pleasant, in 1875, with the degree of M.S. Soon after graduation, he was admitted to the bar of Iowa, and at Sigourney he began the practice of law in partnership with Maj. John A. Donnell, who afterwards became a prominent lawyer and was district attorney in Los Angeles. After five years of active and successful practice in law, however, Mr. Brooks took up banking in 1881, and since that date he has been identified with that important field.
He commenced as cashier of the Union Bank of Sigourney, Iowa,—his home town—and afterwards, either as cashier or president, was the active manager and head of the following banking houses: the Bank of Hedrick, Hedrick State Savings Bank, First National Bank of Hedrick, and the Claremont National Bank, of Claremont. For a time, also, he served as a director and chairman of the loan and examining committee of a fourth bank in Hedrick, the Hedrick State Bank. He was active in organizing and building up the Iowa State Bankers Association—one of the strongest associations of bankers in the United States—and his fellow-bankers elected him a member of the managing board of the Association for eleven successive terms. In 1905 he was elected treasurer of the Association, in 1906 vice-president, and in 1908 president. Coming to California, Mr. Brooks became president of the Claremont National Bank, a position he filled until the bank was consolidated with the First National Bank, since which time he has been vice-president of the latter institution. In the year 1881, in partnership with his life-long friend and business associate, W.H. Young, he laid out the now beautiful and thriving city of Hedrick, Iowa, which they named in honor of Gen. J.M. Hedrick.
The civic and political careers of Mr. Brooks are more than ordinarily interesting. He was first lieutenant of the college company of Iowa State Guards, and was mayor of Hedrick for ten successive terms. He was a member of the State Senate during the twenty-ninth, thirtieth and thirty-first sessions of the Iowa State Legislature and in his first session served as chairman of the Senate Committee on State Buildings and Grounds; while in the two following sessions he was chairman of the Senate Committee on Agriculture—the fourth ranking committee in the legislature. Always a Republican and a progressive, Mr. Brooks has been an advocate of Prohibition, although never a member of the so-called Progressive or Prohibitionist political parties.
At Mt. Pleasant, Iowa, on May 21, 1879, Mr. Brooks was married to Miss Lucy E. White, daughter of the Rev. James H. and Emeline White, and by her he has had four children: Mary, who is married to Raleigh Wilson of Strathmore; Florence, Alice and John White. Mr. Brooks was brought up in the Methodist Church and was a member of the board of trustees of the Hedrick, Iowa, charge, from the date of its organization, in the early eighties, to the present year. For a number of years he was one of the trustees of the Methodist College at Mt. Pleasant, Iowa. He was made a Mason in Garfield Lodge No. 485, Hedrick, and is a past master. He is also a member of Ottumwa Commandery No. 31 at Ottumwa, Iowa, and Kaaba Temple, A.A.O.N.M.S., at Davenport, Iowa.
History of Pomona Valley, California, with Biographical Sketches
of The Leading Men and Women of the Valley Who Have Been
Identified With Its Growth and Development from the Early Days
to the Present
Published in Los Angeles, Cal., by the Historic Record Company
1920
Transcribed by Linda Jackson 9/28/08, Pages 458-461
Los Angeles County Biographies ~ Archive Biography Index ~ Archive Index
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