Thirty-ninth of a Series [date unknown]
Westfield Past and Present
The Hawkins Tavern where General Lafayette was entertained when he visited Westfield, stood on the south side of Main Street where the Brewer Block now stands. It faced the village green. The Tavern stood facing the village green from before 1824 until 1864 when it was moved to make way for the erection of the Brewer Block.
The older generation who remember the great fire of April 30, 1902, in which the old tavern was burned to the ground remember it as the F. W. Crandall Carriage Factory. It stood next to the Nixon Marble Works (today's telephone company warehouse) on land now vacant, facing the ramp to Water Street. This was Main Street in the days before the Main Street viaduct was built.
Lafayette, in his last grand tour of the United States was feted in the Hawkins Tavern on the evening of June 3, 1924. [sic 1824]
The story of having danced with Lafayette that night, when she was about 10 years old, used to be told by the late Mrs. Missouri Kibbee Hawkins who lived on Franklin Street and died in 1917 when she was 102 years old. She would tell how her father, Norman Kibbee, was one of the men responsible for General Lafayette's entertainment while at the Hawkins Tavern. Missouri Kibbee later married William Hawkins, thought to be the son of the owner of the Tavern. She is buried in lot 284, near the McClurg circle in the Westfield Cemetery, the grave is without a stone, and is at the end of a row of Kibbee and Hawkins graves, all marked.
Among those who rest near Missouri are her sisters, Miami, Minerva, Cornelia and Sarah Kibbe whose names are engraved on the brass memorial missel stand at the right of the altar in St. Peter's Episcopal Church.
A monster bonfire blazed on the village green in front of the white frame Hawkins Tavern when the Lafayette party arrived in Westfield after sundown on June 3, 1824. The French General entered Westfield riding in the magnificent carriage loaned by Judge William Peacock of Mayville. The carriage had been taken from Westfield to the Pennsylvania line by the Westfield escort sent to greet Lafayette as he entered New York State. The four men of the escort, on horseback, were Dr. Fen Demming, Dr. Silas Spencer, Judge Thomas Campbell and Ebenezer Upham.
The Light Infantry Company fired a salute and a cannon as Lafayette and his party reached the village green. Thomas Usborne delivered the official address of welcome at the reception held in the Hawkins Tavern where all the ladies and gentlemen of Westfield and a delegation from Fredonia were assembled to meet the French General.
An even bigger assemblage, tradition has it, watched the moving of the Hawkins Tavern 40 years later from its location beside the Park down the Main Street Hill (now the Water Street ramp). There was much betting that the building would break its tow ropes and smash up in Chautauqua Creek.
There is a story that the late F. W. Crandall, then a small boy, was set astride of the ridge pole by his father, so sure was Mr. Crandall that the Tavern would reach its new location in safety--which it did.