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Chase County Kansas Obituaries
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Hawkins, Rebecca Ann Best Early Chase County Settler, Mrs Rebecca A. Hawkins dies. At her home, one and one half miles west of Clements, on October 31, 1898, Mrs. Rebecca A. Hawkins, aged 71 years, 8 months and 7 days. She was buried in the Ice Cemetery, Nov. 1, the services being conducted by Rev. Leigh of Clements.
Mrs. Rebecca Ann Hawkins, nee Best, was born in Tennessee, Feb. 24, 1827. When she was 13 years of age, her father moved to Platte County, Missouri, where she afterwards wedded John Hawkins. They moved to Kansas in 1857, which year their son, LaFayette, was born, who was the first white child born in the Cottonwood Valley. Her husband died in the Union Army during the Civil War, leaving her with a large family, to brave the perils and hardships of frontier life. Her children, four sons and two daughters, are, with one exception, still residents of Chase County. She was esteemed by all as a good neighbor and a woman of the strictest integrity.
Although illiterate, she had an abundance of courage, fortitude and common sense, which were infinitely more valuable to her in her position than any amount of literacy could have been. Suffering long and uncomplainingly from female disorder, death was a welcome relief to her, and obtained rest, which she believed was for her in the Beyond.
Chase County Leader-News, Cottonwood Falls, Kansas, Nov. 3, 1898
(From Margaret E. Haynes, great-great-granddaughter of Rebecca and J W., great-granddaughter of Susan Frances Hawkins and John Thomas Patton.) Rebecca Ann Best, daughter of Henry and Elizabeth Best, and John Wesley "JW" Hawkins, born 1817-1818 in North Carolina, were married on September 19, 1844 in Platte Co., Missouri. They had six children: William Riley; Isaac Richard, (married Mary Ann "Anna" Patton); Susan Frances Hawkins (Married John Thomas Patton, the above Mary Ann's brother); Rebecca Jane; Prince Lafayette; John Henry Hawkins. John Wesley Hawkins died during the Civil War while on duty in Co. M, 9th Regiment, Kansas Cavalry Volunteers, in 1864, and is buried in Arkansas. He first came to Chase County (when it was Wise Co.) in the spring 1857, and took a homestead just west of where Clements is now and in the fall of 1857 brought his wife and four of his children, two more were born in Chase County.
Also, before he died he bought land so each of his children could have about 53 acres, south of Clements and the Stone Arch Bridge, and many of them spent all or most of their lives in Chase County. Some of their history is told in Chase County Historical Sketches, Vol. III.
by Lorna Marvin
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