As luck would have it, the very week that I would work on trying to find a way to help Hawkins autosomal DNA matches make better use of their matches, I heard from Lena. Lena has agreed to my making her information public. I will add it to the Family Finder page today even though it is actually an Ancestry site kit. She has also given me her gedmatch number. Lena says that her Ancestry circle is the Benjamin Hawkins and Hannah Chambers DNA Circle.
We know from yDNA results of the son of Dot Hawkins that Benjamin and Hannah Chambers Hawkins of Buncombe County, NC were a part of Family Group #1. We think it likely that Benjamin descends from one of the orphans of John and Elizabeth Hawkins who died in Richmond County, Virginia in what was probably an epidemic. Lucky for us John made a last minute will in which he named all six of his orphans: William, Benjamin, John and James and two daughters Elizabeth and Sarah. Dot's daughter has been working on proving the connection of her ancestor Benjamin of Buncombe to William Hawkins found in Bedford/Campbell County, Virginia and then back perhaps to the oldest of John and Elizabeth's orphans, William. We in family group #1 have taken to call him William the plasterer because his father asks in his will for Henry Wood to teach him the trade of plasterer. We have no reason to believe that he actually learned the trade nor practiced the trade in his adulthood. But it is a way to sort this man out from all of the William Hawkins who existed in this time frame. I don't know where Dot's daughter is in her research at this point. I have sent out an e-mail asking Dot to put me in touch with her.
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