If the Hawkins family genealogy were a road map, there would be featured destinations at almost every turn. The descendants of Philemon Hawkins played key roles across the state from governors to railroads, not to mention a couple of Texas cattle barons and the wife of none other than Nat King Cole.
The patriarch arrived in Virginia with his wife from their native England in the early 1700’s and he died there in 1725. One of his sons, also named Philemon, had a son – Philemon III.
This Hawkins had three sons who married daughters from a prominent family in Boydton, VA, explained local historian Mark Pace on Thursday’s Around Old Granville segment of TownTalk.
John Davis Hawkins established what would become the Raleigh to Gaston Railroad. Older brother William was elected governor of North Carolina in 1810 and their brother Joseph established the first medical school in the state – right out of his home in Middleburg, Pace said.
“The Hawkins family is wealthy and talented,” Pace said. “Each generation, no matter what they do, they’re successful.”
In 1836, John Davis Hawkins figured $750,000 would be enough to construct the Raleigh to Gaston rail that would ultimately tie in to the main line to Richmond and beyond; he underestimated by half, and the state of North Carolina came to the rescue.
“They ran out of money…they went bankrupt,” Pace recounted. “The only entity that had the money was the state of North Carolina.”
Eventually, the Hawkins family purchased the railroad back from the state and the rest is history.
The railroad “changed the world here,” Pace said. “It brought the outside world here to this part of North Carolina.” The rail allowed local tobacco farmers to send their leaf to the larger markets in Virginia.
Truly, towns popped all along the rails, including Henderson, Norlina and Kittrell.
But John Davis Hawkins also fathered children of enslaved women. One daughter, Rebecca, was raised by her spinster aunt – Hawkins’s sister – who made sure she received a good education and was well equipped in the arena of polite society.
One of Rebecca’s granddaughters, Charlotte, established the Palmer Memorial Institute, a boarding school for Black children near Greensboro in the early 1900s. Charlotte Hawkins Brown had a niece named Maria, Pace said.
And this is where the famous Nat King Cole intersects with the Hawkins family. Maria, grew up to be a jazz singer and caught the ear – and eye – of the famous crooner.
“Maria had a successful musical career,” Pace said. And Maria became Cole’s second wife in what was widely considered “the social event of the year in Harlem” on Easter Sunday in 1948.
John Davis Hawkins also had two sons who moved to Texas and went into the sugar cane business on a little piece of land – 52,000 acres – south of Corpus Christi.
When the Civil War ended and enslaved people were emancipated, the two brothers cut a deal with the state of Texas to basically have a prison farm. Prisoners would get room and board in exchange for their labor.
When the sugar cane business tanked, the brothers switched to cattle, operating the second largest ranch in Texas.
And then, luck struck again in 1901. That’s right, the brothers struck oil. The old Hawkins house still stands there in Hawkinsville, TX, looking for the world that it was plucked right out of Old Granville County and plopped onto a little tract of land in south Texas.
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