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Category Archives: Joseph Roswell Hawley

What a phone call can do

29 Wednesday May 2013

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Genealogy, Joseph Roswell Hawley

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I had an extraordinary telephone conversation last night with a woman who I have never met before but, I learned late last week, is a distant relation. I began my genealogy in a casual way several years, beginning by sitting down with my father one summer evening to make sure that what he knew did not get lost to the sands of time. His health was in decline for several years and it was obvious his time was coming soon. With mom it has been more of a process. Let’s just say she is not the reflective type who enjoys putting the pieces together one by one. Getting details from my mother is done surreptitiously, usually a quick text or email to see if she can flesh out the outline of a life that to me is nothing more than a record on my computer. Done in this manner I have been able to get a fair amount of information. And at the risk of getting her mad I would dare say she enjoys it when kept to a minimum.

Some of you know that I am in the beginning stages of a biography of Union general Joseph Roswell Hawley. Hawley was a captain in the 1st Connecticut, a ninety day unit, and later a colonel and brigadier in the three-year 7th. Seeing where he fought at First Bull Run this pat Sunday was something special. He was something of a Zelig, always turning up where events were taking place. After the war he was the governor of Connecticut, and eventually a congressman and senator. The whole reason I found Hawley was because the urban legend in my family was that we were his direct descendants. If the legend had been true I would have been his great, great grandson. The short version of the story is that I am not.

That brings me back to the phone call last night. The reason for the family legend was that we indeed have Hawleys in our family tree, on my mother’s side of the family. We just never knew anything about them. As it turns out it was the other side of the Hawley family to which we are directly related. I had wondered how part of the family ended up in Nova Scotia way back when. From last night’s conversation I know that they were Loyalists during the Revolutionary War and that they fled shortly after the upstart colonists declared victory. I would label my own proficiency as a genealogist as high-beginner. I had put it aside for awhile, even letting my Ancestry account lapse early this month, because I had hit a wall. Sometimes when you least expect it the door opens again.

The biography is still very much in the early stages but is proceeding nicely. It is a story worth telling, and one that fell into my lap wrapped in a bow imploring me to tell it.

Oh, the possibilities

28 Thursday Feb 2013

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Joseph Roswell Hawley

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I came across this interesting depiction of Joseph Roswell Hawley today. I have not begun writing yet, but things are progressing readily enough with the research, literature review, and other aspects of the biography. This card was part of the 1888 Duke Honest Long Cut “Presidential Possibilities” series. Tobacco cards were not just for baseball players; Duke (the American Tobacco Company after a series of mergers in 1890) and its competitors manufactured cards for all types of events and programs for decades, well into the twentieth century. All told there were twenty-five cards in the 1888 set, which is probably a good ten to fifteen more candidates than was realistic. Every election usually starts off with ten to twelve hopefuls who then drop out along the way. They probably created so many to appeal to customers–and everyone smoked in this era–across the nation. That said, the selections are heavily skewed to candidates from the North, West, and Civil War border states. The Deep South is not represented at all.

In 1888 Hawley himself had already been in the Senate for seven years and was at the height of his powers. What I find interesting about the list are the other potential candidates. There was incumbent Grover Cleveland, eventual winner (but popular vote loser) Benjamin Harrison, William McKinley (the 1896 winner), John Sherman (brother of William Tecumseh and Senate colleague of Joseph R.), Gilded Age powerbroker and seemingly perennial candidate James Blaine (Ha!), Benjamin Butler, and even Robert Todd Lincoln (probably added for the cachet of his last name). The list speaks volumes about the influence of the Civil War generation decades after the war’s end, and are wonderful pieces of Americana.

Honest Long Cut 1888 presidential series

Honest Long Cut 1888 presidential series

The potential candidates

The potential candidates

Quote of the day

10 Thursday Jan 2013

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Joseph Roswell Hawley, Quote of the day

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Harriet Ward Foote Hawley

Harriet Ward Foote Hawley

I do not believe we shall ever conquer till we proclaim emancipation; and yet I suppose there are people in the world who think President Lincoln knows more than Mrs. Hawley.

–Mrs. Harriet Ward Foote Hawley, outspoken wife of Joseph Hawley in a private letter; July 3, 1862

(image/Harriet Beecher Stowe Center)

A journey of a thousand miles

07 Monday Jan 2013

Posted by Keith Muchowski in Joseph Roswell Hawley, Writing

≈ 2 Comments

Joseph Roswell Hawley, 1826-1905

Joseph Roswell Hawley, 1826-1905

It is very much in the nascent stages–for starters I have no agent or publisher just yet–but now that 2013 is off-and-running I am about to begin a project I have been thinking about for the past several months: writing a book. Specifically, I will be writing a biography of Civil War general Joseph Roswell Hawley. Hawley was an officer is the 7th Connecticut and eventually became a division commander and brevet major general in the X Corps. Among other places, Hawley fought at First Bull Run (in the 1st Connecticut), Port Royal and Fort Pulaski, Olustee, and the Siege of Petersberg. He and his men also served under Benjamin Butler, guarding the polling places in New York City during the November 1864 presidential election between Lincoln and McClellan.

Hawley was so much more than a military man, however. He founded the newspaper that eventually became the Hartford Courant, and helped organize the Republican Party in Connecticut in the 1850s. He was also an abolitionist who put his money where his mouth was, becoming one of the first to volunteer when war came in April 1861. Some believe he was the first man to volunteer from his home state. After the war he was governor, congressman, and senator of the Constitution State. He also ran the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. His wife, Harriet Ward Foote, was a first cousin of the Beecher family. Yes, that Beecher family. Mark Twain was a family friend. Hawley was active as a public and private citizen in veterans affairs, including commemorations, in the decades after the war. He died in 1905.

If I do my job correctly I will tell Joseph Hawley’s story in all its fullness and not just offer a drum and bugle chronicle of his military career. I believe it is a story worth telling.

I spent the last few months of 2012 outlining the project and seeing which repositories and libraries will have the materials I will need to consult. Over the next 3-4 years I will be spending time in Hartford, Washington, South Carolina, and northern Florida. I am a little nervous but it feels good to finally be starting. To be continued.

(image by Levin Corbin Handy for Brady Studio, Library of Congress)

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