Julia S. Brooks was Stephen Brooks and Hannah Bennett’s third child. She was born July 3, 1816, near Orwell in Oswego County, New York. This part of Oswego had been formed that year from Oneida County. When she was young, she moved with her parents to nearby Redfield and later to New Hartford (near Utica) in Oneida County, New York. In 1839, Julia arrived in Wisconsin with her family and settled first on the eastern shore of Lake Winnebago.

Simon Quatermass was born in Pennsylvania in 1823. Simon married Julia Brooks in Fond du Lac County on November 19, 1846. The couple soon settled on Julia’s parents’ farm in Oshkosh Township, near where the Insane Hospital would one day be built. They then lived in the townships of Neenah and Vinland, before finishing their lives in the city of Oshkosh at 35 Oxford Street.

The Quatermass family consisted of four children: DeEtte; Ellen Annette (“Bessie” m. Jacob P. Haber); George Harlowe (m. Dolly Susan Smith), and Walter Weed (m. Mary Morris). They adopted a daughter, Harriet (Hattie), when she was a toddler.

In 1850, the Quatermass family farmed at Winnebago (later called Oshkosh) Township. Julia’s father, Stephen Brooks, lived with them. Ten years later, the 1860 census shows the family at Neenah with Julia’s mother, Hannah Brooks, in their care. For some reason, Stephen lived with his son Oliver’s family – he died two years later. By 1870, the same members of the Quatermass family, including Hannah, farmed at Vinland Township. By that time, Hannah was 80 – she died in 1872. Eight years later, Simon and Julia retired from life on the farm and moved into a home at 35 Oxford Street, a bit west of their original property and a couple miles north of the Fox River in the city of Oshkosh. They made this their final residence.

Simon was 65 when he died at his home in Oshkosh on April 3, 1888. Julia (Brooks) Quatermass survived her husband and lived at home on Oxford Street until her death at age 90, on April 7, 1907. She was buried beside Simon at Brooks Cemetery. An obituary appeared the day after her death in the Daily Northwestern:

OBITUARY.
"Dies At Unusual Age - Mrs. Julia Quatermass, One of the Earliest Residents of Winnebago County, Expires at the Age of Ninety-One Years - She Was the Mother of the Late District Attorney W.W. Quatermass - Sketch of Her Life.

"Mrs. Julia Brooks Quatermass, wife of the late Simon Quatermass, and one of the oldest and earliest residents of Winnebago, died at her home, 35 Oxford street, at 2:10 o'clock Sunday afternoon. She had reached the unusual age of nearly ninety-one years.

"Death was the result of a general breakdown, following upon a stroke of paralysis which came upon her twelve years ago. Since that time she had been an invalid, being confined to the house. The end came quietly.

"LIVED HERE MANY YEARS. Deceased was born in Oswego county, N.Y., July 3, 1816. She was the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Brooks. The family came to Wisconsin in 1839, settling first at Clifton on the east shore of Lake Winnebago. Later they removed to the town of Oshkosh, taking up their residence there in 1841. Mrs. Quatermass had therefore been in this county sixty-six years.

"She was married to Simon Quatermass, a farmer, in 1846. Their home was first on the old Brooks homestead near the present site of the Northern State Hospital for the Insane. Later they lived on a farm in Neenah and were afterwards in the town of Vinland. For the last twenty-seven years, the home has been on Oxford street. The Neenah farm gave the present name to Brooks' corners.

"THE FAMILY. Simon Quatermass died in 1888. There are surviving three daughters, Miss De Ette Quatermass, who has been with her mother through the latter's long illness, Mrs. J.P. Haber of Jennings, La, and Mrs. W.M. Ellis of Endeavor. The daughters were all able to be with the mother during the last few weeks of her life.

"Two sons were also born to the couple. George Quatermass died in 1886, and Walter W. Quatermass, a well known lawyer who was for three terms district attorney of this county, passed away in 1903. There are ten grandchildren. Two of them, Harry and Julia, survive George Quatermass, and there are eight living in Endeavor, children of Mrs. Ellis.

"OF STRONG CHARACTER. Mrs. Quatermass was a woman of unusual strength, nobility and resource and up to her last days she had been in full possession of her faculties. She was a member of the First Methodist Episcopalian church and for many years was an indefatigable worker with the congregation.

"The funeral will be held from the residence at one o'clock Tuesday afternoon, Rev. Leon L. Hammitt of the First M.E. church officiating. Interment will take place at the cemetery near Brooks' corners. There will be four pallbearers, Warren J. Neville, Walter E. Neville, Dr. Thomas R. Jones of Winnebago and Edwin W. Payn."

The Daily Northwestern
Oskhosh, Wisconsin
April 8, 1907
Page 3

Simon and Julia left a fine legacy – their four children and an adopted daughter, Harriet: Daughter DeEtte T. Quatermass remained single and was a public school teacher in the early 1900s. She dutifully cared for her mother during the last decade of Julia’s life. After her mother’s death, DeEtte spent many years with the family of her adopted sister, Harriet (“Hattie”) Ellis, in Moundville, Wisconsin. After Hattie’s death in 1926, she lived with her widowed sister-in-law, Dolly Quatermass. Both women were in the home of Dolly’s daughter Julia M Leo’s family in Sidney, Montana. DeEtte died there at age 83, on June 25, 1931. Her body was returned by train to Wisconsin and buried at Brooks Cemetery. Daughter Ellen Adele (“Bessie”) Quatermass married Jacob P. Haber. He was, at one time, superintendent of schools at Ripon, Wisconsin, and then was president of P.B. Haber Printing in Fond du Lac. For a time the Habers lived at Mayville, North Dakota, where Jacob took a job as cashier at the First National Bank, but they eventually left for Jennings, Louisiana. On January 29, 1908, the Habers decided to take a drive. Along the way, Bessie was struck by a stray bullet. She died later that day. The 58-year-old’s body was returned by rail to Wisconsin for burial at Brooks Cemetery. Son George Harlow Quatermass married Dolly S. Smith in 1880. They farmed at Vinland, according to the 1880 and 1885 censuses. George was just 31 when he died, on April 5, 1886, leaving a widow and two children, Harry C. and Julia M. Quatermass. He was buried at Allenville Cemetery, just north of Vinland. Finally, son Walter Wright Quatermass married Mary Morris. He attended the state normal school and became principal of the Read school, but decided in 1889 to attend the state university at Madison to receive his law degree. He returned to Oshkosh and was elected district attorney in 1894. A late January 1903 newspaper mentioned that Walter had typhoid fever. The same paper in early February reported that he was very much improved, the fever having left him and his lungs’ congestion relieved. To the end of the month, the Oshkosh Daily Northwestern followed his recovery, each time claiming that his condition was greatly improved but not yet “considered to be convalescent.” Nevertheless, Walter died of his illness on March 2, 1903, at the age of 43. He was buried at Riverside Cemetery in Oshkosh. Shortly after her birth, Harriet M. Smith was adopted by the Quatermasses. Simon’s mother, Betsy, had been married three times – to Messrs. Quatermass, Smith, and Anderson. Betsy Anderson died at age 72, in 1865 at Vinland, on the farm of her son, John Quatermass. One-year-old Harriet, or “Hattie” as she was known, was a daughter of one of Betsy and her second husband Alexander Smith’s sons. Hattie grew up in the Quatermass household and married Rev. Walter M. Ellis. Mr. Ellis served for 25 years as principal of the Endeavor academy and was pastor of the Endeavor Congregational church at Endeavor, Wisconsin. They and their many children lived with her sister, DeEtte, until Hattie’s death in 1926.