Reuben Hawkins

I have been talking to Brijit (the.blibit@gmail.com) this week of Halloween about her Hawkins family.  Both her paper trail and her genetic trail (autosomal) connect her to Reuben Hawkins who is found in Orange County, Virginia  before and during the Revolutionary War.  However, all of his family joins the mass exodus of the Virginia Hawkins families into Kentucky after the Revolution.  Reuben's wife, Rebecca Edwards Hawkins died in Franklin County, Kentucky 27 July 1840.  We are very lucky that Rebecca applied for a pension because of her husband's service in the Revolution and left a good amount of excellent information for those who came later about the family of this couple.  Reuben is said to have been in uniform when the couple married.  There is information in Milly Farmer's book (you can find her book Bits and Pieces on the main page of this blog....it is one of the top tabs) that says that Rebecca's father was making brandy (may have remembered the wrong spirit...but it was alcoholic) and didn't attend the wedding.  But I have long looked at this family and hoped to have a yDNA participant who would represent this Hawkins line.

I have included Reuben and Rebecca Edwards Hawkins in the John and Mary Long Hawkins line although I never was able to prove that indeed they were part of this family line.  The question remains to be sorted out if Hawkins DNA Family Group #1 will include this large and VERY interesting family or if they are a family of their own.  I do know that they all lived in the area of the Northern Neck and then pushed west into the frontier as it opened up in the early 1800s.  Frontier at that time being Orange, Culpeper, Spotsylvania .....Remember that I do not actually believe that Mary's maiden name is Long.  But people have connected John and Mary Long Hawkins for so many years to this family that I use it as an identifier still.

Brijit has been in touch with Bob Hawkins who also connects to this line.  She and I are talking about the possibility that Bob will be a participant in the yDNA project to represent this line.  For me, this would be a huge, important new piece of information that I have hoped for for a long time.  Both Brijit and Bob seem to have an excellent trail to Reuben and Rebecca Edwards Hawkins!

Here is information that Brijit has sent to me that I don't want to loose.  Brijit's information is in bigger, bolder font while my additions are in this font:

Reuben Hawkins who was married to Rebecca Edwards-- and yes, she did move on to live in Frankfort (Franklin County) KY with her children.  As for Reuben, there's some confusion as to whether or not he did as well.  I've seen conflicting information about whether or not he died in KY or VA, so I wonder if the one who died in VA might have been the other Reuben you mentioned, because the idea of him staying behind while the rest of his family moved to KY doesn't make sense.  

I would add here that Millie Farmer says: 

Reuben didn’t leave a will but his material possessions were listed in Orange Co. THe inventory was witnessed by James Hawkins and then it says by Reuben Hawkins . Exec with Thos Hawkins his security. 

My notes say that Reuben died in 1812.  So the Thos Hawkins named as security is a bit of a mystery to me....my own Thomas Hawkins is likely to have lived in Orange County, but he would have only have been 15.  You know, the gut feeling that comes into my head is that Reuben did not die in Orange County.  That his son, also named Reuben has come back to Orange County to settle his father's estate that he didn't sell before the move.  I wrote another blog post on my main genealogy blog that is of interest here:

http://marshamoses.blogspot.com/2012/12/hawkins-in-orange-county-virginia-in.html

You might like to know a few other things about Reuben and Rebecca that are really, really interesting:

1.  Thanks to Reuben I'm qualified to join the DAR, as he was a Revolutionary War soldier from Orange County, VA.  I haven't finished the process yet, but have started it.

2.  There is quite a bit of evidence that the family was Baptist and that this is why they moved to KY.  Rebecca's father, Uriah Edwards, and mother, Mildred (Head) Edwards, were Baptists.  Uriah was originally from Wales and I understand that there was a large population of Baptists from that country.  Either way, the Church of England was persecuting Baptists in Virginia at the time, forcing them to attend Anglican masses, taxing them, and jailing them.  It appears that Reuben Hawkins' father, William Hawkins, signed a petition for the Separation of Church and State-- a act of which I'm very proud.  If you'd like to read a more detailed account of this information, you can find it in my blog post here:  http://generationsofstories.com/2015/03/ancestors-seek-land-of-freedom/

3.  Rebecca's father, Uriah Edwards, did not approve of her marriage to Reuben and I found evidence pointing to the fact that he (Uriah) was still loyal to the British Crown, while Reuben, as you know, was a soldier in the American Revolution.  It turns out that Uriah may or may not have been directly connected to an enormous fortune in NY dedicated to the Edwards family by the British Crown.  You can learn more about that in this article I wrote: https://www.buzzfeed.com/brijitreed/the-legend-of-the-edwards-fortune-fact-or-fiction-1ytkn

4.  Evidence that I am indeed genetically related to Reuben and Rebecca (Edwards) Hawkins, and Uriah and Mildred (Head) Edwards has shown up on Ancestry through several cousin matches who share these same ancestors, so I know that I'm on the correct path.  Like me, Bob Hawkins is a descendant of Reuben and Rebecca, by way of their son, Moses Hawkins.  I am a descendant by way of their daughter, Emily H. Hawkins McKendrick.  Moses and Emily later left Kentucky and settled in Gibson County, TN-- Emily briefly, since her husband, William McKendrick died there.  She remarried and moved on again to Arkansas and later, Williamson County, IL, where she died.  I am descended through her daughter, Sarah Jane McKendrick, who returned to Frankfort, KY and eventually died there. The McKendrick line of my family has been a brick wall.

OK I have to point out that the fact that Reuben and Rebecca name a son Moses gives me pause for a minute.  All of the Hawkins/Bourne families have a son named Moses who is named in honor of Moses Hawkins (son of Benjamin and Sarah Willis Hawkins) who was killed at the battle of Germantown.  All of the Hawkins/Bourne group belong to Hawkins DNA family group #1.  And so I end this blog post with the same feeling I always do when I try to sort out the early Hawkins families.....I throw up my hands in confusion!