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Chase County Kansas Obituaries
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Hawkins, John Wesley
My Great Great Grandfather, John Wesley Hawkins, known as "JW.", was born 1817-1818 in Rowan County, North Carolina.
His parents are unknown to me. I could not find an obituary for him, only a line in the Chase Co. Leader reporting his death during the Civil War but I have his wife's widow pension papers and his enlistment paper and some records.
I don't know how he came from North Carolina to Missouri about 1840, but he settled in Andrew Co., Missouri & bought land near Savannah, Andrew Co."
On September 19, 1844, in Platte County, Missouri, he married my Great Great Grandmother Rebecca Ann Best, born Feb. 24, 1827 in East Tenn., the daughter of Henry & Elizabeth Best of Andrew Co., Mo.
I have a copy of their marriage record. John Wesley and Rebecca Ann (Best) Hawkins had six children, four born in Andrew Co., MO. & two born in Chase Co., KS. In 1857, when Great Grandma Susan Frances (Hawkins) Patton was five years of age, her parents & 4 children moved in a covered wagon drawn by oxen team to Kansas Territory before Kansas was a state, arriving in the Cottonwood River Valley in Wise County (later became Chase Co.) in October 1857. Their farm was a little west of where Clements would later be on the north side of the Cottonwood River. A creek there was named Hawkins Creek.
Their son, Prince Lafayette Hawkins, born that December was the first white child born in upper Cottonwood River valley. This family knew all the perils of living in pioneer days & my Great Grandma told many stories of Indians, desperadoes, and droughts, grasshoppers and tough living conditions. Children of John Wesley and Rebecca (Best) Hawkins were: William Riley, Isaac Richard, Susan Frances, Rebecca Jane, Prince Lafayette, and John Henry Hawkins.
John W. Hawkins also bought about 320 acres south of the Cottonwood River. He was elected as the first coroner of the county & is mentioned in Cutlers History of Chase Co. The country called for men to serve in the Civil War.
In 1863, John Wesley Hawkins, traveled to the army enlistment post in Humboldt, Allen Co., Kansas, & signed up for three years in Ninth Regiment of the Kansas Cavalry of Volunteers on July 1, 1863. His enlistment paper shows him as 5 feet 9 inches, black hair & eyes, age 45, born in Rowan Co., N.C., & in his photograph he is slender with full beard & moustache. So at age 45 with a wife & family of six children, he went to war. He died May 28, 1864 in the Regimental Hospital at Camp Thacher, near Fort Smith, Arkansas, and was buried in Arkansas. During his duties of courier & delivering mail from post to post, he got sick with measles which developed into pneumonia, probably due to weather & conditions, causing his death. And his wife & six children, all under age 16, were left to brave the wilds of Kansas. His wife and most of children and several descendants are buried in Chase County.
(By Margaret E. Haynes, his gg granddaughter) Submitted Aug 18, 2006.
by Lorna Marvin
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