Capt. Zacharay Smith Brooks I remember seeing often in my youth and early manhood. Zoar Methodist Church, Persimmon Creek, is as it was then called, was one to which I frequently went in my youth. Col. Brooks was a regular attendant. For many years, if my memory is not at fault here, his was the only carriage in all that part of the country, and the only one seen at that meeting house. It then seemed to me to be a very grand sort of life to be able to ride to church in a two house carriage with a servant driving. And there when the carriage stopped to have him to let the steps down and the help the master out! I remember the horses were bay, with nicked tails, as was the fashion in those days. I believe the first time I ever shook hands with Col. Brooks was at a Baptist camp meeting at or near Mt. Enon. Carriages and buggies became quite common in that community after awhile and the good old fashion of riding horseback to church gradually gave way, though it is not entirely abandoned yet. Horseback riding has its advantages - it gave young folks such splendid opportunities of cutting one onother out, which I dare say, the girls enjoyed, but some of the boys, expecially those who were cut out, did not.
