The Hawkins Ranch in Texas: From Plantation Times to the PresentIn 1846, James Boyd Hawkins, his wife Ariella, and their young children left North Carolina to establish a sugar plantation in Matagorda County, in the Texas coastal bend. In The Hawkins Ranch in Texas: From Plantation Times to the Present, Margaret Lewis Furse, a great-granddaughter of James B. and Ariella Hawkins and an active partner in today’s Hawkins Ranch, has mined public records, family archives, and her own childhood memories to compose this sweeping portrait of more than 160 years of plantation, ranch, and small-town life. Letters sent by the Hawkinses from the Texas plantation to their North Carolina family in the mid-nineteenth century describe sugar making, the perils of cholera and fevers, the activities of children, and the “management” of slaves. Public records and personal papers reveal the experience of the Hawkins family during the Civil War, when J. B. Hawkins sold goods to the Confederacy and helped with Confederate coastal defenses near his plantation. In the 1930s, the death of their parents left the ranch in the hands of four sisters, at a time when few women owned and ran cattle operations. The Hawkins Ranch in Texas: From Plantation Times to the Present offers a panoramic view of agrarian lifeways and how they must adapt to changing times. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
I Plantation Beginnings | 13 |
Part II Young Lady Ranchers | 77 |
Part III The Instruction of Town and Country | 143 |
Acknowledgments | 195 |
Appendix Sketches and Letters of the Antebellum Children | 197 |
Notes | 205 |
| 219 | |
| 223 | |
Back Cover | 233 |
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The Hawkins Ranch in Texas: From Plantation Times to the Present Margaret Lewis Furse Limited preview - 2014 |
Common terms and phrases
acres Alston Papers Archibald Archibald D Ariella Alston Hawkins Aunt Janie Aunt Janie’s Bay City boys brick bridge foursome brother Frank calves Caney Creek Caney plantation cattle Chapter Charles Alston cotton cousin crop daughter death Dode door Duff Elmore Rugeley Esker family’s farm father File of Historical Frank Hawkins friends front Galveston Harry Harry’s Hawkins children Hawkins Jr Hawkins Ranch House Hawkins to Sarah Hawkins’s Henry Rugeley herd Historical Data horse Houston HRLTD husband J. B. Hawkins James Boyd Hawkins John Davis Hawkins Karankawas knew Lake Austin land letters lived Liveoak Creek Lizzie married Matagorda County Maude Meta Miss Tenie mother Negroes Norcross North Carolina partners partnership Philemon Photograph plantation plantation house porch ranch hands riding Rowland Rugeley Sallie Sallie Hawkins Sarah Alston Sheppard Mott slaves story sugar house Texas took Uncle Virginia Virginia Hawkins wife Willis Willis Alston wrote