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Description
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Horatio B. Hawkins (1806 – 1886) purchased a tract of land within what is now Tyson Research Center in 1846 through the 1820 Land Grant Act that enabled the sale of public lands by the federal government. Not much is known about Hawkins’ life in St. Louis or his use of the land, which left his ownership at least by 1852, when his family appears to have moved to California. He appears in the 1845 St. Louis city census working in a coffee house with an adult man, an adult woman, and four boys in his household. In the 1847 city directory, he is listed as a pattern maker in business at 53 North Second Street and living at 168 Olive Street.
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Bio
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Horatio B. Hawkins was born in Vermont in 1806 and lived in St. Louis as a pattern maker. He purchased a tract of land within what is now Tyson in 1846 through the 1820 Land Grant Act that enabled the sale of public lands by the federal government. Not much is known about Hawkins’ life in St. Louis or his use of the land, which left his ownership at least by 1852. He appears in the 1845 St. Louis city census working in a coffee house with an adult man, an adult woman, and four boys in his household. In the 1847 city directory, he is listed as a pattern maker in business at 53 North Second Street and living at 168 Olive Street. Hawkins appears with his wife, seven children, and two other family members in Benicia, California in the 1860 Federal Census; the oldest of the three younger children, all born in California, was born there in 1852. Hawkins’ son, Horatio B. Hawkins, Jr., was a steam locomotive engineer and a longtime resident of San Francisco, California. Hawkins died in Napa County, California, 1886.
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Birth Date
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1806
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Death Date
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1886
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Parent of
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Horatio B. Hawkins Jr.
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Enslaver
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No records of relation to enslavement yet identified.
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Dates of Tyson Land Ownership
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1846
