LAFAYETTE T. HAWK

The biographical annals and the history of Atchison County, Kansas, record three distinct periods of settlement in Kansas and Atchison County. The first was the real pioneer era, when an influx of settlers came, who were the first to break the prairie and lay the foundation for future development. The second was directly after the Civil War, when many people came from all parts of the East and European countries. The later period was in the eighties, when there came from Ohio and Pennsylvania many excellent American families who have prospered and taken leading paces in the civic and agricultural development of the county. The Hawk family of old Pennsylvania German stock, came to this county in the latter era. Lafayette T. Hawk, among this number, who can be reckoned among the latter-day old settlers of the county and who has resided here for over thirty-fur years and has worked his way upward from the station of comparatively a poor man to a position of affluence in the county.

L.T. Hawk was born July 22, 1849 in Coshocton county, Ohio a son of Jonathan and Margaret (Neede) Hawk, both of whom were born and reared in the Buckeye State. Jonathan Hawk was born in Coshocton County, Ohio in 1822 and was a son of Leonard Hawk, born in Pennsylvania of German parents. Leonard Hawk was an early immigrant in Coshocton County, Ohio and settled in that county when the whole region was a wilderness and carved a farm from the dense woods which covered that part of the Buckeye State in the early part of the nineteenth century. He first came to Ohio in 1814. Jonathan Hawk came into possession of the old home place of his parents' in Coshocton County, but sold out in 1883, and came to Kansas, to join his son, Lafayette T., who has preceded him to Atchison County by one year. during the first year of his residence here, he made his home on his son's farm, and then purchased the Shell property in Effingham, where he made his home until his demise in December, 1889. He was the owner of eighty acres of land which he farmed. Jonathan Hawk was the father of eight children, namely: Sarah, died in Ohio; Lafayette T., of whom this review is written; Mary Jane Roll, widow of Samuel Roll and residing in Effingham; Samuel, living in Oklahoma; Mrs. Margaret Denbow of Great Bend, Kan.; George Leonard of Oklahoma; Edith Elzina, died at the age of four years; John, deceased. The mother died in January, 1891 at the age of sixty-six.

Lafayette T. was reared on the ancestral farm in Coshocton County, Ohio, and received his education in the district schools of his neighborhood. He learned in his youth to do the hardest kind of farm work and was taught by his parents the best methods of tilling the soul. When a young man he became imbued with the desire to locate in the west where opportunities seemed to be greater than in his home state and he saved his earnings toward this purpose. Not long after his marriage he came to Kansas in 1882 and located in Benton township, Atchison County. His cash capital being limited to the sum of $300, he deemed it advisable to rent land for the first year, then bought his first farm of 160 acres at the purchase price of $25 per acre. This farm was necessarily bought on time, but with good management and industry. Mr. Hawk was enabled to pay out and add considerably to the improvements of his place, which is one of the most attractive in the county and one of the most fertile and productive. Mr. Hawk also added ninety acres to his land holdings in later years and invested his surplus in western land which he traded for the Effingham Hotel property which he now owns. He is a stockholder and director of the Farmers and Merchants Bank of Effingham, he is also a stockholder in the Midnight Oil Company, a producing concern with headquarters at Morris, Okla.