The Nancy Hawkins cabin

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(Sep 27, cont.) Even though it’s a tiny family cemetery, the Hawkins Cemetery rates a place name on Google Maps.

Two dogs came out to meet me as I walked my bike across the steel bridge into the yard. One of the disadvantages of riding on rural gravel roads is that most of the dogs haven’t been socialized to interact well with bicycles. They just haven’t had much opportunity. But these two dogs were the silent, friendly type. Maybe they had gotten used to cemetery visitors. Or maybe they were the type who don’t bother to bark at strangers unless their owners are around to be impressed by their watchfulness. But there was no sign of anyone being home.

Only the larger of the two dogs posed for this photo of a historic marker in front of the house — a marker I had not expected to find. The smaller dog wanted to climb up on me and help me operate the camera.

The marker reads:

On this spot
where once stood
the Nancy Hawkins cabin
ROBERT BURNS
pioneer Methodist Circuit Rider
conducted the first religious
service in Jay County
in the Fall of 1832

I had never before heard of Robert Burns, though he seems to have been a contemporary of another Methodist Circuit Rider, James Armstrong, who is associated with one of my Black Hawk war sites in Indiana. It looks like the De Pauw University archives have a set of Burns’ saddle bags in its collections. Maybe they have information about James Armstrong, too.

But I had come here because of Caroline Hawkins, not Methodist circuit riders.

It seems I had come to the right place, because the Nancy Hawkins who lived here was her mother. In an 1887 collection of county biographies, which includes that of a son who also lived here, I learned that she had taught her husband to read and write. (Her husband was one of those who was said to have taken provisions to the soldiers of John B Campbell’s starving, frostbitten force after they had destroyed Miami villages along the Mississinewa.) She lived here for 36 years after her husband died:

…John J. … was born in Bourbon County, Kentucky, the date of his birth being September 25, 1789, and in his boyhood went with his father to Ohio, being reared without education. He was married to Miss Nancy Sellers, who taught him to read and write. He was a Lieutenant in the war of 1812, and later became a popular and very efficient sheriff of Preble County, Ohio. Losing his property in Preble County, he concluded in 1829 to move West, and the spot near the Little Salamonie which he had selected proved to be section 11 of Pike Township, Jay County, Indiana, and he was the first settle in the county. The family, consisting of the parents and six children, cut their way through the woods and arrived at their new home March 8, 1829, with but $3 in cash. All in the family who were old enough aided in clearing their land, and in the spring of their arrival had cleared and planted about seven acres, raising a fine crop of corn and garden vegetables. The first season they lived in a ‘half-faced camp,’ which was a rude shelter against a large log, entirely open on one side, the open side serving as door, window and fireplace. The following September they erected a log cabin. In those days their corn was taken to Greenville, Ohio, or Richmond, Indiana, to be ground. Game of all kinds was in abundance, and the father was an excellent shot.

The sale of skins and furs kept the family supplied with a little money, and by strict economy they managed to accumulate a little property. The father died March 15, 1832, from an injury he had received caused by the carcass of a deer falling upon him while he was endeavoring to suspend it. His widow survived until 1868. She was born in Bourbon County, Kentucky, June 4, 1789, of Irish descent. Her father, Nathan Sellers, was a Revolutionary soldier, and distinguished himself at the battles of Brandywine and Germantown. While in Kentucky he was made a magistrate, and was finally appointed sheriff, which office he resigned because of the inhumanity of the laws he had to execute. A common mode of punishing negroes in that State was to nail their ears to posts and then whip them. He was strongly opposed to slavery, and seeing no prospect of its abolition in Kentucky he left that State of Ohio in 1809. He died as he had lived, a consistent Christian, in 1826. Several ancestors of Mrs. Nancy Hawkins served with Daniel Boone in the war with the Indians, and were victims to the tomahawk and scalping knife.

But the first order of business was to find that cemetery. It took some looking around before I spotted it behind me, up on the bank overlooking the bridge which I had crossed to enter the yard. If I had already read that 1887 biography from which the above quote is taken, I may have spotted it a little quicker. And I would have been absolutely sure that this was a good destination for the day’s ride.

The old home is picturesquely situated on the banks of the Salamonie River, retired from the highway, and its surroundings and associations so interwoven with the pioneer history of the county, the family burying ground immediately in front of the residence containing representative members of the family, even one buried almost a hundred years ago, all help to make the homestead of great interest, even to the most careless visitor.

The next stop was the cemetery itself. (I don’t recall seeing a marker for any family member buried a hundred years earlier than 1887, though.)