Page:Encyclopedia of Virginia Biography volume 4.djvu/24

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10
VIRGINIA BIOGRAPHY

General Taliaferro married, in 1856, Sally Lyons, of Richmond, Virginia, born in 1825, died in 1899. Children: Leah Sedden; Judge James Lyons, of Gloucester, Virginia; Warner Throgmorton Langbon, professor in Agricultural College, College Park, Maryland, married Emily Johnson; George Withe Booth; Fannie, died aged twelve years; Mary Heningham Lyons, married Harry Osborne Sanders; William Churchill Lyons, married Mabel Scleter, and has children: Mary S. and William L.; Edward C. S., of whom further.

Dr. Edward C. S. Taliaferro was early educated and prepared for college under private tutors. He then entered the historic William and Mary College, whence he was graduated with the class of 1895. Having chosen medicine as his profession he entered the Medical College of Virginia, receiving his degree M. D. with the class of 1898. After serving a term as intern at St. Vincent's Hospital, Norfolk, Virginia, he engaged in private practice until 1902, after which he went abroad and spent a year in Vienna, taking post-graduate courses in surgery. He then returned to Norfolk and resumed practice. Dr. Taliaferro has a large general practice, but prefers surgery and so far as possible makes that line of practice a specialty. He is chief of the Medical Clinic of St. Vincent's Hospital; was for four years assistant health commissioner of the city of Norfolk; president of the Norfolk County Medical Society; member of the American Medical Association, and formerly belonged to many of the social clubs of the city. His skill as a surgeon is fully recognized and his large practice in both medicine and surgery fully occupies his time to the exclusion of other interests. He is very popular and a warm friend of the children, who in turn are his devoted friends. He is prominent in the Masonic Order, belonging to Lodge, Chapter, Council, Commandery and Shrine, and is an Elk. In religious faith he is an Episcopalian and has served as vestryman of St. Paul's Church. In politics he is a Democrat.

Dr. Taliaferro married, November 10, 1908, Alice Serpell, daughter of Goldsborough and Georgianna (Clark) Serpell. of Maryland. Children: Georgianna. born August 24, 1909; William Booth (2), born December 2, 1910; Alice Serpell, born February 5. 1912.

David Tucker Brooke. Descendant of a line whose members, while gaining honored prominence in all walks of life upon which they entered, were conspicuously brilliant at the bar and upon the bench, David Tucker Brooke, in the forty years of his legal career, worthily upheld the reputation attained for the family by his forty years, and as an attorney and jurist displayed the force and power that made his ancestors the legal lights of their day.

The Brooke family is one of those families of the English gentry who early came to the Virginia colony, impelled, not by religious persecution, but by that mingled desire for adventure and for more land that has been an English characteristic since the days of the Vikings. Bearing patents of land from the crown they were free to choose where they would locate, and adventure was plentiful with the Powhatan confederacy, dominant for two or three generations after the death of Powhatan himself. The old motto of the commonwealth. En, dat Virginia quintum. "Lo, Virginia gives a fifth dominion," fitly expresses the patriotic loyalty to the old home and pride in the new that characterized these colonists.

(I.) William Brooke, the immigrant, came to the New World in 1621, settling in the Virginia colony, then under the control of the London Company. The journey was made in the "Temperance." He selected for his plantation a region on the Rappahannock river since known as Essex county, Virginia.

(II.) Robert Brooke, probably the son of William Brooke, was born in Essex county, Virginia, 1652, and probably died on the Brooke estate. He served as clerk of Essex county. He married Catherine Booth, and they were the parents of a son, Robert, of whom further.

(III.) Robert (2) Brooke, son of Robert (I.) Brooke, was one of that famous company called the "Knights of the Golden Horseshoe," who led by the celebrated and chivalric Governor Alexander Spotswood, started in 1716 from Williamsburg to cross the Blue Ridge mountains, then the furthest frontiers of the English civilization