Who was Silas M. Brooks?
Born Silas Markham Brooks
on October 10th 1824 in Plymouth CT, Silas matured and took a job in
a local clock shop and also made musical instruments. At age 24, the talented craftsman met a man that would change
his life forever.
Phineus Taylor (P.T.) Barnum hired Brooks to design and build a replica druid
wind instrument for his traveling circus.
Barnum asked Brooks to travel with the circus to help play and
maintain the instrument.
Later when Barnum had worked the act to it’s end, Brooks reconstituted the band and opened his own circus. He added a well-known Philadelphia balloonist, William Paullin, to his show. At one performance Paullin became very ill and the large crowd started to become unruly and impatient for the take-off. Brooks did the only thing that he could to calm the crowd, he made the ascension himself. It was a perfect flight. Brooks later wrote in his diaries, “No one knew that it wasn’t Paullin himself. It got me into the balloon business.”
At one point Brook’s circus engaged John Wise, then the most famous American balloonist, to make balloon ascensions. The balloons flown by Wise, and later by Brooks, were made of varnish coated silk to help it hold hydrogen. The hydrogen was generated by mixing sulfuric acid and iron or zinc filings. The balloons of the day were surprisingly similar to gas balloons in use today, with a valve at the top made of wood and leather held shut by a coil spring and activated with a rope that hung down into the basket for descents and deflations. Today we use mostly helium, a safer nonflammable alternative lifting gas and hot air balloons which are much cheaper to operate.
Wise, Brooks and other balloonists of the period, offered their services to the U.S. Government during the Civil War. But another famous aeronaut, Thaddeus Lowe, got the contract to serve as aerial reconnaissance spotters in a fairly successful but under appreciated program.
After the war, Brooks returned to Connecticut and continued making balloon ascensions. Like many of the showman balloonists of his day, he would call himself “Professor” Brooks, and would bill himself as the "Great American Aeronaut", despite his never having completed the equivalent of high school.
Brooks' final
flight would come in 1894 from Bushnell Park in Connecticut. This meant that
Brooks succeeded in flying until he was nearly 70 years old, and that his flying
career spanned over 40 years. Unfortunately, old age was not kind to Brooks.
He died in a poorhouse in Burlington, Connecticut in 1906 at the age of
82.
His
obituary in the Hartford Courant would sadly state "The funeral was a
pathetic scene, made pathetic by the thought that this man whose going out was
of so little consequence except to a very few had once been really great in the
eyes of many. It takes no prophet to predict that briars will soon overgrow
Brooks' grave and that even the memory of his fame will be a forgotten story of
the past."
Fortunately, through the efforts of Dr. Carlton, The Burlington Historical society, the Canton Collinsville Museum, Jim Ellis and the modern-day Connecticut balloonists of the Connecticut Lighter-Than-Air Society (CLAS) the Hartford newspaper's final prediction has been proven false. The story of Silas M. Brooks lives on and "this" story is written thanks to the aforementioned sources.
Brooks' grave
is no longer overgrown with briars. In
an appropriate act of tribute by today's balloonists to a man who preceded them
in the skies, the Connecticut Lighter Than Air Society in December 1997
dedicated a brass plaque in the Burlington cemetery at the grave of Silas
Brooks. The plaque reads "Silas M. Brooks, Connecticut's First
Balloonist".
An entertainer
and master of man’s first means of flight he displayed the courage of an
explorer at a time when the great industrial revolution was just getting
underway. There was no 911 to call
in case of injury. No radios.
No convenient motorized chase vehicles or transportation network.
No national weather service briefings.
Our local ballooning club
the Connecticut Lighter than Air Society became interested in preserving the
memory of Silas Brooks when some members found out that he was buried in a
paupers grave and all but forgotten. In 1997 the club raised the money to
buy and place a marker at his final resting place in Burlington, actually just a few miles
from the festival. Since
that time the Northwest Connecticut Balloon Festival has sponsored the light
hearted
memorial cup competition
in his name. Silas Brooks was no angel, he liked to have fun. So we
try not to
take the competition
too
seriously and we always have some fun with it.
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