Charles Henry Crooks: Brilliant and Flamboyant

1883 - 1926

Charles Henry Crooks and Nellie Reed Williams, on their wedding day

Charles Henry Crooks

      Charles Henry Crooks was born June 16, 1883, in Gilman, Illinois, the son of Thomas Armor Crooks and Meroa Louisa Yeomans. He had 2 siblings: Helen Redfield Crooks (1885) and Fred Raymond Crooks (1888). Helen married William McFarland, a farmer from Loda, Illinois, and a man 20 years her senior. Raymond served as the principal of several Illinois schools, graduated from and taught at the University of Illinois medical school and practiced medicine. He lived in Chicago from about 1913 until his death in 1966. Dad had much more contact with his McFarland cousins than his Crooks cousins. Even though Raymond was the attending doctor at Charles' death, when Dad went to visit his Uncle Raymond while attending the University of Chicago, he received a very cool reception.

       According to Old Gilman Lore, Charles graduated from Gilman High School when he was 13 years old. While in school, he shared honors with Calvin Coolidge for writing the best essays in the U. S. on the topic "The Causes of the American Revolution". He later graduated from a business course at Grand Prairie Seminary. later attending Oberlin College in Ohio. After the Spanish-American war, when he was about 21, he went to the Philippines to help set up a school system. This involved training the more educated Philippines in the organization and administration of local schools. When he returned to the States, he served as principal of several Lake County schools. He later worked in a telephone factory in Waukegan with his cousin, Arthur Yeomans, which is how he probably met Nellie! For a time, he worked at Marshall Fields as a security guard, but the time frame is not clear. In about 1910, he was a sales manager for the Cincinnati Clock Company.

      In January 1920, he was living with his aunt, Anna Yeomans, in Waukegan. On February 11, 1920, he married Nellie Reed Williams in Waukegan, and they moved to New York. A month later, though, he returned to Illinois for his father's funeral. By March, they were residing in Cincinnati, Ohio and by January 1921, they were living in Brooklyn, New York, where his first son Raymond (Dad) was born.

     By 1922, he returned to Chicago, where he lived with his family at 1141 Laurel Avenue in Chicago. His next 2 children, Dorothy (1922) and George (1924) were born there.  He worked as a real estate salesman and no doubt encountered lots of people. This is probably how he contracted the streptococci infection which resulted in the lobar pneumonia that killed him on December 22, 1926, at the age of 43. His attending physician was his brother Raymond. Services were held at his home on Laurel Avenue. His obituary mentions that he was a Mason.

    Dad remembers his Mom describing Charley as a flashy dresser who wore expensive ties. The McFarland cousins said he worked at lots of different places and quickly rose to the top wherever he worked. His brother, Ray, was evidently jealous of him.  Dad's cousin, Bob McFarland, said that Charlie was an avid reader. He would get several books from the library after school on Friday, stop by his father's store to get a box of cookies and have all the books read by Monday.

Written by Dorothy Crooks, his granddaughter.