Some Descendants of William Hawkins and Margaret Harwood
How it all began, and how it progressed ...
Back to Sue, Judy, and Steve's Ancestors
Back to William and Margaret's Descendants
Mary Jane Alley Hawkins was my grandmother -- we
called her Mammy.
Some of my earliest memories with Mammy -- and I spent a lot of time with
her from the time I was a toddler until I was an older teen -- were of
sitting with her while she told me stories of the families. As a typical
child who loves all the attention from a loving grandmother, I spent the
time being her special charge -- not recording history.
When I grew up, I remembered stories of French Huguenots (was the
Alley
family once Allee?? I don't know. I never found it in my research),
red-headed Irishers (
Steel family), Black Irish (
Dougherty family? I've never quite
understood what those were -- Irish of Moorish descent?), and, for the
Hawkins family, the story of seven brothers and something about New York
and Holland. Or was Holland associated with one of the other branches of
the family? All I remembered was that I thought of seven young men,
brothers, and tulips when I thought of the Hawkins family.
I started my Hawkins quest in 1986 when my folks and I traveled back to our
old stomping grounds in West Virginia, visited old cemeteries there, and
Dad suggested he and I take a little trip up to Erie Pennsylvania where his
grandfather and great grandfather came from. Why not -- how often does an
adult child get to spend quality time with her dad? Making my Dad happy was
one of the joys of my adult life.
Our little trip was successful because we found Leander's will and some
other Hawkins information there.
As Dad's health started failing a few years later, I tried to keep him
interested in life by digging a little further into the Hawkins family. It
seemed to please him. (And because I love my mother, too, I also delved
into the
Shreve family history.)
I began by looking for seven Hawkins brothers in New York who immigrated
from Holland. What I ended up with was an English
man
and woman who came to Rhode Island and eventually produced a descendant
(
Uriah) who produced at least seven sons , and
some, if not all, of those sons migrated from Rhode Island to New York,
then drifted to Pennsylvania and other parts of the United States.
Is my trail correct? As well as I can determine, it is. I am sure of the
generations from me through
George Washington Hawkins
and Betsey Wells. The trail from George and Betsey indicated I should
look into Rhode Island records about the time of the Revolutionary War.
After hours and days at the LDS Family History Center in San Diego, the
Carlsbad Library, and the San Diego County Library in downtown San Diego,
and time on Prodigy and Compuserve genealogy sections, I eliminated most
all Rhode Island Hawkins families except for
Uriah. I prayed he would be the one. He had the requisite
number of sons and he even had a George Washington Hawkins among them. And
he actually had some written documentation about him -- a will.
But how to get connected, if there was a connection?
I wrote to Otsego County in New York and was put in touch with a researcher
there who found
John Hawkins' family tree for me.
It provided the missing link and confirmed what I hoped would be confirmed.
I worked on the families off and on from 1986 until sometime in 1996. Dad knew of my
progress but cared less and less as time when on. Toward the end, I think
he seemed pleased simply because he thought it would please me if I thought
he was pleased. Such is the love between a father and daughter.
It's in the memory of my father and his mother, my Mammy, and the love for
my mother (who had no idea she had
so many relatives, some near and some distant, who grew up with her (
www.rootsweb.com/~wvwetzel/shreve/index.htm), that I publish this information in a place where I hope
individuals related to us may find it and be assisted by knowing some of the material I used to find the lineage -- and perhaps make a wish come true
for someone else.
RSR
Sept 10, 2001