* LOCAL/FAMILY HISTORY DEPT. *  DONNELLSON PUBLIC LIBRARY *  500 PARK AVE. *  DONNELLSON, IA *  52625

Hawkins Taylor: A Man of Action

Hawkins Taylor was not only a founder of West, but a frontiersman, lead miner, farmer, territorial legislator, sheriff, mayor, and friend of a U.S. President.

He was born on a farm in hilly and heavily timbered Barren County, Kentucky on November 15, 1811.

His father Samuel was an Irish immigrant and came to the United States in 1781. He married Catherine Walker in Rockbridge County, Virginia in 1790. Hawkins’ mother died of a lingering illness in 1822 and he and his two older brothers were left to a hard life and very little education. As Hawkins later reminisced, “few boys had seen or knew less of the world than I did.” Despite the limited education, he did admit to an intense interest in politics, and that would later change his life.

As he approached adulthood, Taylor learned the tanner’s trade. He left Kentucky for Missouri in April 1831 with a horse, saddle, bridle, and $29, hoping to find work in the West. He was disappointed and dissatisfied with what he found and after staying there a week, homesick and not knowing what to do, he went back to Kentucky.

However, after about one month he again set out for Missouri. Crossing Indiana and pushing on to Marion County, Missouri, he stayed with his distance cousin, William Patterson, near Quincy.

By spring 1832, Taylor had again become restless. He traveled up river by boat to the Galena lead mines with Hayden Gilbert. There was a new discovery at Snake Hollow, about 30 miles outside Galena, which caused great excitement. Taylor took up several mineral claims, settled into the camp, and went to work.

While there, the Sauk and Fox tribes, under the leadership of Blackhawk, were trying to avoid expulsion from the state of Illinois. One night a frantic messenger told the camp that Indians had attacked and defeated Major Stillman about 70 miles on May 14 and were headed in the general direction of the camp. This caused panic and most fled to Galena within an hour. He and an estimated 2,000 other miners were bottled up in Galena for two weeks with nothing to do. It was apparent that the Indian hostilities continued and not knowing when it would end, he returned to William Patterson’s home in Missouri.

In the fall of 1832, Taylor and his cousin William Patterson talked about prospects for a better life at an Illinois settlement of former Kentuckians in Irish Grove northwest of Springfield. He went to Springfield and borrowed $50 from a total stranger and “entered 40 acres of timber land in the bottom of Salt Creek.” He felled trees and trimmed rails until it was too dark to see. By winter’s end he had made enough rails to fence two sides of a 40-acre field.

In the fall and winter of 1833, Taylor built a log house at Irish Grove; in spring 1834 he married Melinda Walker, a cousin and had their first child, Catherine Esther in the spring of 1835. At this point, Taylor recalled that “nobody was really well; all were full of malarial fever.” In early 1836, Taylor and three relatives started to look west of the Mississippi River, to what was then part of Michigan Territory and thereafter became part of Wisconsin Territory and then Iowa Terrorism.

Next Month: Taylor moves his family to West Point