People in Georgia: Benjamin Hawkins
Indian agent Benjamin Hawkins was an avid promoter of grapes grown in the vineyards at his compound on the Flint River. He once sent his friend Thomas Jefferson a package containing thirteen labeled varieties with complete instructions for planting and care.
A few hundred yards south of the Georgia Highway 128 Bridge is one of the most historic landmarks on the Flint River. It was here that one of Georgia’s most fascinating, but historically ignored, personalities made his home and served both his country and his Indian neighbors. His name was Benjamin Hawkins and on the gently rolling hill on the east bank overlooking the river is where he built the Creek Indian Agency. VIEW AN INTERACTIVE MAP.
Hawkins was a native of North Carolina. Fluent in French, he served as George Washington’s interpreter during the American Revolution. After the war, the state of North Carolina elected him to the U.S. Senate for several terms. Then in 1796, Washington appointed Hawkins “Principal Agent for Indian Affairs South of the Ohio River.”
For the Indian Agency, Hawkins selected a site on the east bank of the Flint River. If was located just below the Fall Line where the Southern Piedmont meets the Coastal Plain. At that point, the river ended its rapid fall over hard, quartzite rocks and continued its journey to the sea at a slower meandering pace over flatter, sandy terrain. This was also where a Creek Indian trail, known as the Lower Creek Trading Path, crossed the river. The path followed the Fall Line east to west, connecting Fort Augusta on the Savannah River with Creek Indian towns on the Chattahoochee River near the site that would eventually become Columbus.
Inside a one square mile, rectangular shaped compound, Hawkins built 25 structures. These included his house, kitchen, an office, stables, a blacksmith shop, a tavern and a bear pen.
His peach orchard was the first commercial peach orchard in Georgia. He cultivated thousands of peach trees and distributed them to Indians up and down the river. Witnessing and recording the first killing frost of the peach industry, he sent a letter to President Washington in May of 1795 saying, “The frost… has destroyed the most valuable of our fruit, peaches.”
His huge strawberry patch was the envy of both red men and white men. An 1812 newspaper account reported that Hawkins grew one plant that had 300 berries stemming from one root.
An avid promoter of grapes, Hawkins once sent his friend Thomas Jefferson a package containing thirteen labeled varieties with complete instructions for planting and care.
Hawkins lived with his housekeeper Lavinia Downs for many years and they produced six children out of wedlock. When a serious illness threatened to end his life, he finally married Lavinia only to recover and live another four years.
Honest, fair, well educated, hungry to learn and eager to share his experiences, Hawkins set out to educate Indians to use modern tools, technologies and agriculture. He tried to convince them to shift from an economy of commercial hunting to one that required less land.
During his 20-year tenure he continuously found himself in an impossible situation trying to balance the rights of Indians with the insatiable desire of American frontiersmen and settlers to move west and acquire new land.
Hawkins’s method of dealing with the Indians was 180 degrees opposite from the thinking of the popular military hero Andrew Jackson, who had little respect for Indian rights and wanted the land cleared for white settlers. Jackson fought decisive Indian battles in the region during Hawkins’s tenure as Indian agent. Treaties after those battles took away huge portions of Creek territory under the Indian Agent’s stewardship.
By the time Hawkins died in 1816 what he feared during his lifetime was rapidly taking place – total eradication of the Creek Indians from the Flint River corridor. Twenty years after Hawkins’s death, his antagonist, Andrew Jackson, by then President, would order all Creeks removed from the region during what would come to be called the Trail of Tears.
Hawkins' gravesite is located on the site of the Indian Agency and a monument to him is located in Roberta. VIEW INTERACTIVE MAP.
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Benjamin Hawkins
Roberta, GA, PeopleSouth of GA Hwy 128 bridge west of Roberta is one of the most historic and most ignored landmarks on the Flint River, the site of Benjamin Hawkins' Indian Agency.
Marilyn Bridgan says:
This was such an encouraging article. I have been looking for information to help our grandson with a report on Georgia for his Social Studies class. I vaguely remembered hearing about our grandfather who looked after Indian affairs.. Benjamin Hawkins.. thank you for honoring his work.
Edward Jordan Lanham says:
How odd is this? Last Saturday, I stopped by his grave on the way to Reynolds. I met-up with a group and we searched the old Civil War Fort located on private property east of Reynolds. The Fort is located one river crossing south of the one at the Hawkin’s Bridge.
From your past Flint River research, you may already know about the fort. The earth-works fort was used to guard the railroad crossing over the river.
Our next outing is to attempt to find Ft. Lawrence, a War of 1812 Fort located across the river from Hawkins Agency.