Chapter 1: Born of the Land — Georgia Roots (1841–1859)

Thomas entered a world already shaped by contradiction. His mother, Adeline Murphy, was just twelve years old when she gave birth to him—barely a child herself. His father, William Wiley Hawkins Sr., was thirty-one, a man of some influence in their rural community. The age gap alone tells us what history will not name directly: Thomas’s very birth was marked by power and imbalance, common in a region where law and custom bent to uphold white supremacy and patriarchal dominance.

It remains unclear whether the Hawkins family was enslaved, free, or held a liminal status common to some Black and mixed-race families in Georgia. But whatever the case, Thomas was raised under the shadow of the slave economy, in a society where Black families—free or not—lived with daily fear, systemic exclusion, and a razor-thin margin between survival and ruin.

From the moment he could walk, Thomas would have been expected to contribute. His earliest memories may have included the sound of mules grunting in the morning, the scent of lard frying in an iron pan, and the sharp sting of sweat mixing with dust as he followed his elders into the fields.

Georgia in the 1840s was a land of labor. The cotton industry ruled the economy, and the backs of Black people—whether enslaved or nominally free—carried its weight. Even small farms mimicked plantation systems, with strict social codes and rigid racial lines. White supremacy was not just a belief—it was a daily, enforced reality.

But there was more to Thomas’s childhood than toil.

There was church in the woods, where people gathered under brush arbors to sing spirituals, whisper Scripture, and find joy in the rhythm of shared breath. These gatherings were more than worship—they were resistance, education, and hope. Children learned who they were, not through schoolbooks, but through testimony, lullabies, and the steady example of the elders who refused to let their humanity be erased.

As the oldest child in his household, Thomas carried extra weight—literal and emotional. He may have helped deliver his siblings, fetched water from the well, repaired fences, or watched the sky for signs of a coming storm. He learned quickly: discipline, obedience, endurance.

By the time he was sixteen, the country was already fracturing. The newspapers, which he may have heard read aloud in town squares or at church, buzzed with talk of abolition, state rights, and a war that hadn’t yet come—but could be felt in the wind.

But in 1859, just before the world split in two, Thomas took a different step into manhood:

He married.

Her name was Polly L. Newton, a young woman of resilience and strength, much like his mother. Together, they began building a family that would one day survive slavery, war, Reconstruction, and Jim Crow.

They didn’t yet know that history was waiting to test them.

But the land did.

And it had already taught Thomas how to survive.

Chapter 2: Young Love in a Divided Land (1859–1865)

In 1859, just months before the country shattered into war, Thomas Hawkins stood beside Polly L. Newton in District 235 of Oglethorpe County, Georgia, and promised her a life.

They had no idea what that life would become.

At eighteen, Thomas had already known the weight of work, responsibility, and fear. Polly, likely around the same age, brought with her a quiet strength, a woman shaped by the same red Georgia earth and the same whispered prayers. Their wedding wasn’t grand—likely a small church ceremony or family gathering—but it marked the beginning of a lineage that would survive war, poverty, and the lies of freedom.

By 1861, Georgia had seceded from the Union.

The world they were building was suddenly surrounded by fire.

The Confederate war machine didn’t just take white soldiers. It took laborers, and many of them were Black men—enslaved or free—conscripted by force to dig trenches, lay railroads, and carry supplies. If Thomas was free at the time, he may have been forced into one of these labor battalions. If enslaved, he would have been moved as property wherever his “owner” dictated. If neither, he may have lived in the dangerous limbo between legality and survival, doing everything possible to avoid being taken.

He may have kept a low profile, working quietly, eyes down. Or perhaps he ran—hid in the woods, protected by kin, returning only under the cover of night. It was a time of shadows, when Black men walked a razor's edge between labor and lynching, suspicion and survival.

Meanwhile, Polly became a mother.

Their first known child, Dinah Hawkins, was likely born in the early 1860s, somewhere amid the rising smoke and fear. Polly gave birth while cannons thundered miles away, while neighbors whispered about Union troops moving through Atlanta, and while food grew harder to find.

She raised children under the constant threat that they might not grow up.

She stirred pots with one hand while rocking babies with the other, while listening for footsteps on the road—Yankees, rebels, raiders, anyone who might bring danger. Even if Oglethorpe County didn’t sit directly in General Sherman’s path during his infamous March to the Sea, the fear alone was enough to curdle milk and steal sleep.

What did freedom look like in those years?

It was a whisper. A dream passed through prayer circles. The Emancipation Proclamation was issued in 1863, but it did not free every Black person in Georgia. Most enslaved people remained in chains until Union troops arrived, or until the war finally ended in 1865, when the 13th Amendment officially abolished slavery.

But legal freedom didn’t bring safety. Or land. Or food. Or justice.

Thomas and Polly were left with the same tools they’d always had: their hands, their faith, and each other.

They had survived war. Now they would face something more complex:

Reconstruction.

A new America, promised but not yet built.

A world unmade—and waiting to be claimed.

Chapter 3: The Farmer of Danielsville (1865–1880)

The war was over, but the work had just begun.

When the South lay in ashes, Thomas Hawkins did what men of his generation were taught to do—he returned to the land. In the hills of northeast Georgia, in a town called Danielsville, Thomas planted not just crops, but a life for his family—one built in the wake of slavery, war, and unkept promises.

The year was 1870, and Thomas was 28 years old. The U.S. Census recorded him as a farmer, married to Polly, with six children under their roof. Their names read like a hymn: Dinah, Maliessie, Letitia, Alice, Wiley, Thomas Jr. Each one a heartbeat. Each one a reason to keep going.

Their farm was likely modest—a rented plot carved from red clay, bordered by split-rail fences and low-slung pines. A mule, if they were lucky, helped plow rows of cotton or corn. There was no machinery, just hands and backs. The house: wood, rough-cut, probably one room for sleeping and another for everything else.

But there was school.

The census notes that Dinah was attending school, a radical act in a region still hostile to Black learning. In the years following emancipation, education became more than a tool—it was a weapon against a system that had long denied it. Every letter learned, every number written, was a blow struck for freedom.

Thomas and Polly knew this. Though likely unable to read themselves, they sent their children to school with polished shoes and whispered prayers. They believed in the future they would never fully see.

Daily life in Danielsville was hard.

Thomas worked the fields from sunrise to dusk, plowing, planting, repairing, harvesting. Rain brought hope. Drought brought fear. Cotton was king, but it often failed to feed a household. There were no safety nets, no second chances. If the harvest failed, you borrowed. If you borrowed, you owed. And if you owed, you stayed trapped—another kind of bondage dressed in legal language.

Polly was the axis of the home. She bore more children, kept the garden, nursed the sick, and made food stretch when there was none to stretch. Her hands stitched, cooked, lifted, and praised. Her voice kept peace, her glance kept order.

Together, they endured the Reconstruction years—a fragile window when Black families could vote, hold office, and own land. But around them, white resistance boiled. Freedmen’s schools were burned. Churches were threatened. The Ku Klux Klan rode at night, and every Black family knew someone who had vanished in the dark.

But the Hawkinses kept going. Quietly. Steadily. Faithfully.

They worked with purpose. They taught their children dignity. They carved out a space where joy could still live, even in modest forms—a hymn at the table, a harvest that held, a baby born strong.

By the end of the 1870s, Thomas was more than a farmer—he was a patriarch. The war had changed the country, but not the land. The same soil that once held them in chains now held their roots.

And Thomas was determined that those roots would hold.

Chapter 4: Building a Legacy in Oglethorpe (1880–1898)

By 1880, Thomas Hawkins was 39 years old. He had sixteen children and one wife. And each morning, he rose before the sun to tend fields that barely gave back what they took.

Yet, the Hawkins house was full—not just of mouths, but of motion. Girls learning to sweep in perfect squares. Boys hauling water and chopping wood. Babies crying, chickens clucking, Polly giving instructions from the kitchen with a glance or a gesture. The house pulsed with life.

They now lived in Oglethorpe County, not far from where their story began. The land was still red, the work still hard. But Thomas had carved something precious into the clay: continuity. His children were healthy, disciplined, and proud. His wife, Polly, remained the steadfast drumbeat of the home.

Neighbors knew them. Church folk greeted them with respect. And though Thomas likely never held political power, his influence was undeniable. He had weathered slavery, war, emancipation, and the cruel disappointment of Reconstruction’s collapse. And still—he stood.

But the world around him was shifting again.

In the 1880s and 90s, white Georgia reclaimed its grip on power with new tools: poll taxes, literacy tests, segregation ordinances, and violence. The Ku Klux Klan returned in hooded silence. Black farmers lost land through rigged contracts and fraudulent debt. And in 1896, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that “separate but equal” was legal—enshrining Jim Crow into law.

Thomas surely felt the change.

Maybe he walked into a store where he once bought feed freely, only to be told to use the back entrance. Maybe his children were forced out of schoolrooms built with the promise of freedom. Maybe he heard rumors of lynchings in nearby towns and came home early, counting heads to make sure his boys were safe.

But still, he tilled. He taught. He stayed.

He passed down stories while shelling peas. He corrected his children with a look. He led grace at the table, even when there was little food. He planted not just crops, but values—discipline, humility, endurance, and above all, faith.

By the late 1890s, his oldest children were adults. Some had married. Others still lived at home, helping in the fields or caring for the youngest. Dinah, his firstborn, was now a woman with children of her own—raising them with the same principles he had carved into her heart.

On May 20, 1898, Thomas Hawkins died in Oglethorpe County, Georgia. He was 57 years old.

He died in a world once again closing its fist around his people.

But he left behind a family that refused to be erased.

Sixteen children.

Dozens of grandchildren.

A name still spoken with reverence.

He had no headstone that we know of.

No street named after him.

But ask the descendants of Dinah Hawkins.

Ask the children raised by Fess Strickland.

Ask the great-grandchildren in Lansing, in Chicago, in Atlanta.

His legacy still breathes.

He was not rich.

He was not famous.

But he planted a name that bloomed across generations.

He was Thomas Hawkins.

Son of Adeline.

Husband to Polly.

Father of many.

And the reason we are still here.