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The Bruce families of Independence and Izard Counties in Arkansas and related families
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Individual Record of George Washington Hawkins
     The following record has been given by Bobby Marion Hawkins, the son of Orbra and Mammie Hawkins. Bobby is the Hawkins family geneologists and we give thanks for his many long hours in developing the Hawkins family history.
     George Washington Hawkins was born on June 21, 1881 in Van Buren County Arkansas near the town of Shirley. He was the youngest child of Macy H. Hawkins and Martha Nolen Hawkins. George had 4 older brothers and one older sister, which included William 25 years older, Marion 23 years older, Oliver 16 years older, Johnny age unknown (drowned before George was born), and Lucy 4 years older. His father was 44 years old and his mother was 43 years old when George was born.
     George's parents were both born, raised, and married in Overton County Tennessee, near the community of Hilham. The 1860 census shows them in Overton County near their parents. We know that Macy served in the Confederate Army cavalry in the Civil War. We have not located Macy's family for the 1870 census, but we know they were not in Overton County. We can speculate that the Civil War and the resulting turmoil caused Macy to decide to move on to new surrounding. A son James Oliver Hawkins was born in September 1865, for which all census records list his birthplace as Tennessee, and family stories place his birth in Overton County. Sometime between 1865 and 1870 they sold their farm there and began moving about the country following the timber logging trade. Family stories say Macy and Martha never again owned their own place, but were instead always renters. As far as we know Macy Hawkins and his family lost all contact with the Tennessee Hawkins family after their move. When the author visited Overton County in 1979 and talked with some of the Hawkins descendents there they knew Macy moved off somewhere but did not know where. We know from family stories that Macy and family lived for a time on the Wabash River in Illinois. A daughter, Lucy, was born in 1877 and all census records list her birthplace as Illinois. Family stories say that a son named Johnny drowned in the Wabash River. Later the family arrived in Van Buren County Arkansas where George was born in 1881, near the town of Shirley based on family stories. The family also spent time in Woodruff County in the country outside Augusta near the WhiteChurch area and was living there in the early 1890's based on marriage records at the Woodruff County courthouse. George was familiar with both areas. Probably the moves to Woodruff County were to work in the rich cotton fields of the White River bottom land.
     By June 1891 when George was 10 years old his mother Martha had died, because we know his father Macy remarried at age 55 to a Mrs. Francis Dunn (age 50) on 6-14-1891 as registered in the Woodruff County Courthouse marriage records. Family stories say that this lady was not well liked and was not a good cook. One morning Macy woke up Lucy (age 14 at the time) and asked her to cook them some biscuits. Lucy told her father that "You married that woman, let her do the cooking". Either the marriage broke up or the lady died, because on 11-30-1891 Macy remarried to a Mrs. E.C. Hashford (age 48). Family stories say this lady was as well liked by George and Lucy as the previous lady was disliked. Marriage records also list another marriage by Macy at age 57 to Elizabeth Cook (age 57) on 7-20-1893, when George was 12 years old. By the time George finished the eighth grade his father had died, which was probably about 1894, and George went to live with his older brother James Oliver Hawkins. Oliver had married Nancy Hackett in Februrary 1890. In the 1900 Woodruff County census George is listed as a boarder at age 19 with Oliver's household. The census also lists George as literate and as a teacher. Family stories relate that George, who had a great love for learning and reading, was encouraged by Oliver to continue on in school after the eighth grade, but George felt he should start working to pay his own way instead and did not continue school after eight grades.
   Mysteriously we lose all trace of George's older brothers William and Marion Hawkins after the 1880 census, although William's name does appear on one of the 1891 marriages by his father Macy as a witness. George seemed to have little contact with either of them after his father's death, which was in about 1894. At that time William would have been age 35 and Marion aged 33. Searches by the author through the 1900 Arkansas census soundex did not reveal their locations anywhere in Arkansas. Family stories say that William and Marion married sisters, and that Marion's daughter and son visited George and Oliver around 1930. George was very close to and in frequent contact with his brother Oliver and sister Lucy who were both much closer to George in age. Lucy had married at age 16 to Joe Carrigton on 12-2-1893 and had a son named William Carrigton. They seperated and Lucy then married a Mr. Elam sometime before 1900, with which she had 3 children, Robert, born 1900, and Minnie Elam, born between 1900 and 1906, plus a third child which died as a baby between Robert and Minnie.
     In 1901 Oliver, who had a great love of music, arranged to take over an organ selling franchise in Independence County. George moved with Oliver and his family in January 1901 as they moved to a home north of Newark, at first west of Dota Creek, near the Tom McDoniel place. Later Oliver's household moved to the road going toward Galloway Ford on Dota Creek from Newark, near where the Edwards Farm barns are at now. Lucy stayed behind in Woodruff County with Mr. Elam and their family. Then in about 1903-1906 Mr. Elam died leaving Lucy with 3 young children. George went to Woodruff County and helped Lucy move to the Newark area. George and Lucy moved out from Oliver to keep house themselves, about a quarter mile away, again on the road to Galloway Ford crossing Dota Creek. There are no details available on what George did for a living during these years, but probably it was a variety of jobs, including farming. George and lucy lived together during these years until her older son William Carrigton could take care of things and put in a crop. Then George moved out on his own. In the April 1910 US Census he is listed as living as a hired man working as a farm laborer with a Curtis family, still in the Wycough Township not far from Oliver Hawkins. We believe George spent some timein these years as a bachelor traveling some as a salesman type in the Van Buren County area. Lucy about a year or so after George moved out married to Dan Brock from the local area about December 1910. George and Lucy apparently got along well. He would remark in later years that "his family had four brothers and they all had a sister".
     We know that from 1908 to January 1911 Rosie Grizzle, who was a teen age girl during this time period, worked picking cotton in the same fields and crews as George Hawkins did in the farm country north of Newark. She relates that she could pick faster than George could but arranged to pick at about the same speed as George so as to stay beside him and talk with him. A romance developed and on January 8, 1911 George and Rosie rode in a jorsedrawn hack to the Eaves loghouse west of Dota Creek near Mt. Carmel to be married by a Justice of the Peace. George was 29 years old and Rosie was 18 years old. Lucy had married Dan Brock just one month before, in December 1910.
    At some point early in their marriage George wanted to try his traveling sales job again so George and Rosie traveled up into Van Buren County near Shirley to a community called "The Settlement" where Rosie stayed in a rooming house while George traveled for days at a time through the surrounding communities. Rosie was not happy with this situation but did not complain. After a few weeks of this George told Rosie he was giving up this work as he did not want to live like that away from his wife so much as a married man. George then hired on with the Missouri and North Arkansas Railroad which was then constructing a line through Van Buren County. After some time working at this George was injured by a falling boulder. While disabled they returned to the Newark area, where they would stay for the rest of their lives. I assume George resumed sharecropping rural farming.
     On April 20, 1913 a son named Vernon Durward Hawkins was born, again in a house near Galloway Ford north of Newark. George was age 31 and Rosie age 20 at Vernon's birth. On Oct 6, 1916 a daughter, named Lillie Martha Hawkins after Rosie's mother Lillie, and George's mother Martha was born. In January 1918 George and Rosie bought 40 acres of land from Mr. Watson in the Logan Township area and moved there, where they would live the remainder of their lives. George remarked to Rosie when they moved to this place that his father Macy had owned his own place in Tennessee, but sold it to follow the timber logging trade and never again owned his own place. George intended for them to hang onto this place.
   Uncle Vernon remembered that it was bitterly cold with a heavy snow on the ground when they moved into the wooden frame house in January 1918. George worked the first few days repairing a wooden sill which had rotted out underneath the house. Uncle Vernon at age 4 watched the operation very carefully through the window as George trimmed and moved the log, then Jacked up the house and with horsepower assistance positioned the new sill in place. Next the roof was reworked to lower the pitch of the roof. The 40 acre farm had an endless series of tasks and chores like that to keep the young family busy.
    George and Rosie settled into a happy subsistence farming lifestyle, typical in rural Arkansas, supplemented by timber cutting in the winter time to sell railroad ties, or temporary work for large local landowners in the area. The family worshipped on Sundays at Center Grove Baptist Church, about 3-4 miles to the northwest over dirt roads, where Rosie's distant relative Tolivoro Grizzle had been a founding member. There were family visits during rest days with George'd brother Oliver Hawkins and family, or his sister Lucy and Dan Brock, or Rosie's mother Lillie and husband Henry Penny, or Rosie's sisters Joyce Magness and Minnie Watts. In addition there were many friends and neighbors that they were friendly with in the rural area. Probably both George and Rosie had been scarred somewhat by the loss of one of their parents during childhood, with George's mother dying when he was under 10 years old, and Rosie's father dying when she was 9 years old, and the resultant turmoil as the surviving parents grieved, then remarried, causing an adjustment to a stepparent. Now they settled into a happy family life.
   On January 2, 1926 another son was born at the farmhouse. He was named Obra Marion Hawkins, with Orbra coming from Rosie's younger brother and Marion coming from George's older brother. Orbra would have the black hair and blue eyes that were characteristic of the Hawkins family. He was 13 years younger than Vernon and 10 years younger than Lillie but took an active part in all the family activities.
     The older son Vernon had a desire to go further in education than the eight grades available at the Logan schoolhouse. George remembered his own dreams of further education in his youth and encouraged Vernon to keep going to school. For grades 9 and 10 Vernon was able to attend Black River school, only about 2-3 miles north. But for grades 11 and 12 the nearest school was at Newark, a 7 mile trip each way over dirt roads every day. Vernon and his parents agreed to saet aside one patch of ground to grow cotton on, from which the income would be used to buy him a bicycle, which Vernon would use to ride back and forth each day to Newark. The cotton crop did well and Vernon bought the bicycle. He rode it everyday to Newark school, 14 miles round-trip for 2 years and graduated in May 1931. Rosie's sister Joyce Magness lived on the Newark road about 2 miles north of Newark and occasionallu in really raw weather Vernon would stay there overnight.
    Vernon had a desire to go on further to school, to college. He got a job for the schoolyear 1931-32 teaching at Logan school, now that he was a high school graduate, and taught his younger brother Orbra in the second grade! He saved the income from this job while living at home with his parents and the following schoolyear 1932-33 went to the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. This was a long distance away in those days with limited transportation. Vernon also went the schoolyear 1933-34 to the University, but then ran out of money. Meanwhile Lillie also wanted a good education and arranged to attend Newark High School but stayed with friends in town rather than ride a bicycle daily back and forth from home. After high school graduation Lillie also attended college off and on but went to Arkansa College in nearby Batesville rather than the further away U of A. Orbra continued through eight grades at Logan school, then on to Newark school for the final four grades, with school bus service now reaching to near the Hawkins home.
    Vernon, after two years of school, had run out of money and decided to join the Civil Conservation Corps (CCC) which was helping many young men find work in this time of the Great Depression. He was sent out west to Idaho for a year along with Virgil Cash, also of the Newark area to work in reforestation efforts. He remembered years later the large amount of snow that fell in the winter he spent there. His brother Orbra remembers Vernon coming back home and playing the cowboy song "The Strawberry Roan" on the guitar. Next Vernon found work back in Arkansas with his two years of college credits working for Arkansas Power and Light Company at Marion Arkansas, just west of Memphis, in 1935. For the next few years Vernon would come in by train every few months to visit his family.
     Meanwhile the Great Depression had made life difficult for the Arkansas farm families like George and Rosie. Money was tight. Much of the food was raised by the family on the farm, with garden vegetables fresh in summer and canned for winter use, potatoes raised in summer and stored for winter use, fruit orchards for fresh fruit in season and canned for the rest of the year. There were hogs, chickens, cattle to provide meat, and the proven country methods of preserving fresh killed meat to last through the year. Daily cow milking gave milk, to be stored in wells or coolers, and chickens to lay fresh eggs. Still money had to be generated to pay for food staples like flour, cornmeal etc, and also for all the other items a family needed like clothes. Cotton was the primary crop from which rural farmers raised cash money. In addition there was winter time timber logging to form railroad ties, and fall cotton picking for major landowner farmers in the river bottoms. Some money came from selling surplus cattle each year. Rosie remembers talking once about possibly taking in a border in their home to make extra money. George remarked that he liked things just as they were, so she did not bring it up again. One area of outside income was in selling eggs to merchants in Newark. George and Rosie did regular business selling eggs because of the care they took to assure the merchant got a good quality product, with all fresh eggs, and George usually made a weekly trip to Newark by wagon to deliver the eggs. He usually crossed Dota Creek near the Tom McDoniel ford where his wooden wagon wheels could soak up water to keep the wheels tight against the iron rims, and also to water his horses. This was also to mean he passed by the George Brooks house on the west side of Dota Creek during his weekly trips. Years later after WW2, his son Orbra would marry Mammie Brooks who first remembered him from those weekly trips to town past her house.
     Despite the Great Depression George and Rosie managed to survive and even get a little ahead. In about 1940 they bought another 40 acres due west of their 40 acres. In June 1939 Vernon married Bernice Sullivan from Memphis, bringing a daughter-in-law into George and Rosie's family. Aunt Bernice remembers that the Hawkins family traveled to Memphis to meet the Sullivan family in a pickup truck and that both families went to Overton Park in Memphis to eat a picnic lunch together. Aunt Bernice often told the story that Vernon never asked her to come along during the time they were dating when he would travel by train to Newark to see his family. An acquaintance of Vernon's Frank Taylor Griffin, was working at the time in the Memphis area, and she asked Frank why wouldn't Vernon ask her to come along. Frank explained to her that in those days of Victorian morals in rural Arkansas that it was not proper for an unmarried man and woman to travel together on a trip like that. That satisfied Aunt Bernice as to Uncle Vernon's behavior. Aunt Bernice had grown up in Memphis in a well-to-do home before the Great Depression ruined her father financially, and the rural Arkansas lifestyle was a cultural change for her. After marriage Vernon and Bernice set up houskeeping in Marion. A few months later the war in Europe began. In the summer of 1941 Vernon and Bernice made a decision to quit his steady paying job with AP&L and go back to school at Fayetteville to complete an electrical engineering degree, which was a dream of his and to advance his technical career further. Lillie decided to join them in Fayetteville also to attend college and in the fall of 1941 they moved by bus to Fayetteville where all three shared a rooming house apartment and Vernon worked part time for the U of A physical plant. In December 1941 during the fall semester of school as they were sitting around their dining room table the news that Pearl Harbor had been bombed came over the radio. America was now in war.
     Lillie had met a gentleman named A. B. Jackson before going to Fayetteville. During the fall semester she corresponded with him, and elected to go back home for the spring semester. She was staying with her parentswhen a tragedy struck. On a windy spring day in early 1942 a grease fire broke out while Rosie and Lillie were home alone cooking. The fire spread quickly to the papered walls of the old wooden farmhouse and burned the entire house. Lillie and Rosie were able to save only a dresser. Gone in only a short time was everything else, including food, clothes, a lifetime of books and pictures, even lumber stacked on the porch for a possible new house or addition. Orbra was in his last few months of high school, Lillie was trying to save money to attend college. In conversations with my grandmother, Rosie, in later years she remembered vividly how the friends and neighbors came to their rescue in this time of need with donations of clothes, food and other needed items. The family moved into an empty house a mile or so away and George, Orbra, and neighbors started in building a new house which George located on the 40 acres they had purchased to the west. By summer 1942 a white wooden frame house with a tin top roof and 4 rooms plus an adjoining well shed was ready to move into. George would later recall that neighbor Earl Barber "was there when the first nail was drove and was there when the last nail was drove".
    In August 1942 Lillie married A. B. Jackson and moved to his home near the community of Balch in Jackson County to set up housekeeping. She was age 25 and A. B. was age 50. A few weeks later Orbra left home at the age of 16 to head to Fayetteville for his first semester of college. For the first time in almost 29 years George and Rosie were living by themselves. George was 61 and Rosie was age 50. They continued the subsistence farming lifestyle they had always led. Oliver's wife Nancy Hackett Hawkins had died many years before in 1915, and now more recently Lucy's husband Dan Brock had died in 1941. George, Oliver, and Lucy began to have more time to spend together again as they had done many years before.
    Orbra decided after the fall semester of college not to continue for the spring semester. He returned home briefly, then signed up for a sheet metal welding school in Little Rock which promised a job in the booming wartime defense industry after completion of training. If the war continued for several years, as it appeared it would, Orbra could expect to be called for military service when he turned 18 regardless. Orbra completed the welding training and was assigned work in a Kaiser shipyard in Portland, Oregon. Already there were several cousins on Rosie's side working there, which were Aunt Joyce Magness children, and even for a time her husband Uncle Woods Magness. Orbra traveled out to Portland and worked there for several months. Then in January 1943 Orbra turned 17, with the war looking to continue for several years, so that at 18 he could expect to be drafted. Orbra had gotten interested in ships in the shipyard work and decided to go ahead and enlist in the Navy at age 17 though he had to have permission to enlist. Irbra wrote George and Rosie with the approval papers. Rosie would recall years later that George read through the letter and at first said "I'm not going to sign them". After a long sleepless night of tossing and turning, and probably a lot of praying about it, George got up the next morning and said that at least in the Navy Orbra would have a bed to sleep in at night rather than on the ground as in the Army infantry, and signed the approval for enlistment papers.
    Orbra went through boot camp in San Diego, then electrician's mate training in St. Louis, then by home for a brief visit before heading for the South Pacific, In May 1943 Vernon completed his college degree work at the U of A in Electrical Engineering. For the last year in school he taught Pre-Radar courses from the university to servicemen in training for the war as a part-time job. When he graduated Vernon interviewed for and took a job working for the Army Corps of Engineers with his first job assignment to be in St. Louis. Then word came that higher-ups had changed his job assignment and due to national need and his experience in radar Vernon was now required to report to Washington D.C. to work for the Army Material Command in the area of electronic communications. So off to Washington they moved. Lillie in July 1943 delivered a baby girl, name3d Rosa Lea Jackson, after Lillie's mother, the first grandchild of George and Rosie!
     The momentous years of WW2 went by, Orbra survived the war in the Pacific and returned home safely in December 1945 just under the age of 20. Vernon and Bernice settled in for their career working for the US Army in Washington, and Lillie worked at grade school teaching during the school year and attended college in summer to work toward completing her college degree.
     Orbra lived at home with his parents in the late 1940's. The modern age was coming to rural Arkansas. Rural Electrification brought electricity to the Hawkins home, with electric lights and electric pumps to supply running water all installed by Orbra. Orbra bought a farm tractor and then later a jeep. Orbra and Rosie recalled later traveling down from their home to see Lillie and A.B. at Balch traveling on the farm tractor with a wagon pulled behind. Orbra drove and George, Rosie, Aunt Joyce and others rode on the trailer. It took half a day to make the 25 mile one way trip over gravel and dirt roads!
     George at the end of WW2 was 64 years old. He never fully embraced all the new methods, never learned to drive a car or own one, and was cutting back on his farming activities by this time. Orbra led the way in adding all the modern methods and tools. In the late 1940's George brother Oliver and sister Lucy declined in health. Lucy died in Februrary 1948 and was buried by Dan Brock ant Mt. Zion Cemetery. Oliver died in July 1948 at the age of 82 and was buried by his wife Nancy at Edwards Cemetery a short distance away from Rosie's father Richard Grizzle. George was the last of his family remaining at the age of 67.
    In November 1949, Orbra married to a girl from the local community, Mammie Brooks. They moved in for a short time, about a month, with George and Rosie until Orbra and George could complete their small 3 room house just up the hill from the original house. Orbra and Mammie set about making a living farming on the 80 acre place plus a 40 tract Orbra had bought after his return from service which was about a mile west.
     In July 1950 Rosie's mother, Lillie Penny, died at the age of 78. Later that month George and Rosie's daughter Lillie had their first grandson, James Hawkins Jackson. In January 1947 Vernon and Bernice had their only child, a daughter named Marilea Eva Hawkins. In July 1951 Orbra and Mammie had their first child, a daughter named Brenda Fay Hawkins. Lillie and A.B. completed the set of 6 grandchildren for George and Rosie in October 1954 with the birth of a daughter named Roma Sharilyn Jackson.
     In the late 1940's Uncle Vernon and Aunt Bernice were doing well financially in Washington, had bought a home and a new car. They drove out to Arkansas to see the family, the first of many trips to come. Vernon would work for the Army until his retirement in 1975. Lillie finished her college degree in education at Arkansas State Teachers College at Conway in the early 1950's and worked in Jackson County as an elementary school teacher until her retirement in the early 1980's. Orbra endured a period of major drought in north Arkansas in the early 1950's and decided to seek work off the farm to help support his family. In August 1952 he went to work for the Missouri Pacific Railroad as a maintenance of way welder, using some of his experience from WW2 days of sheet metal welding. He would work for the railroad until his retirement in 1988.
    George and Rosie had successfully raised their 3 children, given them a stable home, trained them to have a strong christian faith, disciplined work ethic, and love of learning that helped them succeed in life. Now George and Rosie were settling into retirement, such as there was in those days of the 1950's with old age pensions etc. From 1952 to 1957 often Orbra's family was gone during the week with Orbra at his work locations on the railroad, then home on weekends. The author was a small child during those years of 1954-1957 and has vague memories of George Hawkins, his grandfather. He was always doing work around the place, chopping wood, fixing fence, things that were very interesting to a small 2-3 year boy.
    In June 1955 Rosie planned a surprise 74th birthday party for George on a Sunday. While George went to church on Sunday morning with Orbra and family, Rosie stayed home and set up a large potluck lunch outside under the shade trees in the yard with neighbors from all around who knew of the surprise party. The author remembers well driving up in the yard with his parents and grandfather and seeing the large group of neighbors and friends waiting to greet George. George told Rosie later that he really enjoyed that occasion.
    In early June 1957, almost 2 years later, George was planning to move some lumber from the old barn at the original houseplace over to their present home for use on some type of project or building. Alton McDoniel and sons brought a horse drawn wagon over to help move the lumber. On the way back with the load of lumber, George had a fatal heart attack while the wagon was crossing the pasture branch and fell off the wagon dead. The McDoniels rushed to aid him and to come up to the house to call a doctor, but he was already gone. The author remembers well this sad day with neighbors and friends rushing to Rosie's aid. George was 75 years old, just 2 weeks short of his 76th birthday. George and Rosie had been married 46 years. Funeral services were held at Newark Baptist Church and he was buried at Blue Springs Cemetery in Newark. He had moved to the Newark area 56 years before his death. He left 3 children and 6 grandchildren, which since has expanded to 13 great-grandchildren and 3 stepgreatgrandchildren. He was a good man and the good things he did still influence my life today.
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