The following comes from Ron Hawkins whose DNA results connect him with Family Group #15. If you have questions or comments, Ron can be reached at: ron.hawkins@wildblue.net
Our Hawkins line starts off in England with Robert and Mary
(perhaps Marie) leaving there in April of 1635 aboard the Elizabeth and Ann and
arrives in Charlestown, Massachusetts in the month of May.
Robert and Mary had three sons, Joseph, Zachariah and Eleazer.
The branch of Zachariah settled around Long Island and the branch Joseph
settled in and around Derby, Connecticut. Not much of the line of Eleazer is
known. Rumors on the internet say he may have ventured to the south somewhere,
or perhaps may have died before starting any family at all. I am almost certain
that Robert and Mary may have had some daughters, but I have not come across
and records indicating that they had any. Alot of my information has been found
in the Allen County Library in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, where vast amounts of books
are on shelves and numerous records on microfiche.
After the Revolutionary War our branch of the family
migrated to the Cincinnati, Ohio area, later to Covington, Kentucky for awhile
before they again migrated to the southern part of Indiana where they spent
sometime before migrating north in Indiana just south of Wabash where they
stayed for sometime. One of our ancestors in that area made his wealth as a
teamster of oxen and yoke.
In our family history it talks the mansion that he built and
in Somerset, Indiana. One winter during deer hunting season in Indiana, with
nothing to do I decided to try and locate this so called mansion. Just before
arriving in Somerset I passed a cemetery located north of Somerset and decided
to stop in there for a look around after finding or trying to locate that
mansion.
In the town of Somerset there were just a handful of houses
and filling station and the local post office. I inquired at the filling
station as to where Somerset actually was and told them I was doing genealogy
work on my family. They explained to me that what I see now is actually the
town of the new Somerset, the old town lies underwater as the Army Corps of
Engineers years ago made a reservoir which hides the old town during the summer
months. I left there and headed down to the water and to my amazement the water
level was down and I was able to walk from where I parked and onto the river
bottom eventually finding the foundations of buildings from the original Somerset.
After spending sometime looking around I continued on my main objective to find
that mansion.
As I said earlier the time frame was deer hunting season in
Indiana and I came across two hunters and decided to stop and ask them if they
possibly heard of the mansion that was built and owned by a Hawkins family. One
of the men pointed and said do you see that brick house across the fields? That
is it.
After stopping there and taking a couple of photographs I
left and went back to that cemetery north of Somerset. When arriving there I
noticed that this cemetery was made up of several small cemeteries and later
discovered that when the reservoir was constructed they had to remove and
re-interment the remains of those people to higher ground because the water of
the reservoir would have covered them where they originally were laid to rest.
In that new cemetery I found many of my distant relatives. Part of my line once
again moved on and settled in Culver, Indiana also known as Lake Maxinkuckee.
This is where my 4th great grandparents, Zadock and Jane
(Cooper) Hawkins are laid to rest, on
the southeast corner of Lake Maxinkuckee and my 3rd great
grandparents William and Telitha (Owens) Hawkins are buried about 10 miles from
them just across the county line in another small cemetery.
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