Hawkhurst Ancestry

Daniel Hawkhurst m. Catherine Stephens
Frances Hawkhurst m. Elijah Horton Cronk
Emma Teresa Cronk m. George Bartlett Hoffman
Minnie Lenora Hoffman m. John Schmieg
Florence Bell Schmieg m. Stanley Spartan Tumbridge

1. Daniel Hawkhurst (Hawk) is listed under both names in probate and family records. His name does not appear in the U. S. Census of Westchester County, N. Y., in 1790, but in the Census of 1800 he is noted as residing in North Castle, which is six miles north of White Plains and bounded on the west by Mt. Pleasant.

He made his will as a resident of Mt. Pleasant and under the name of Hawkhurst. It is dated March 7, 1814, and was proven March 23, 1814. He mentions his farm and states his children are young and his wife about to become a mother, but he does not name them. This will is filed in White Plains, Liber D, p. 84. He named as his executors Abraham Miller, Elijah Fisher, Jr., and Elijah Davids, and the witnesses were Phebe Parse, Peter See and Wm. Requa. He was buried under the name of Hawk in the Methodist Cemetery in White Plains (near the old church), which is now known as the Rural Cemetery. His stone is of brown sand stone and the inscription on it reads In/memory of/Daniel Hawk/who departed this life/March 10th A. D. 1814/aged 40 years and 20 days.

Close by his stone is a similar one with the inscription recently completely scaled off, but it is that of his wife, Catherine Stephens, born April 3, 1779. She died in 1814, the same week he did, and both passed away of typhus fever.

Just who Daniel Hawkhurst was is a problem not solved. The small family genealogy in the New York Record, Vol. 33, p. 25, gives his date of death to a Daniel who was born in 1792, which is of course an error, as his years on his grave stone show, and as his descendants know.

His children were William, Isaac, Margaret and Frances, and they all used the name of Hawk. A rather imperfect Bible record indicates that the daughter Margaret was born October 21, 1805, and that she married Henry Wilson, born March 16, 1791, but the family state she married George Bird.

William Hawk, the son of Daniel Hawk, was, according to his grave stone in the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery at North Tarrytown, N. Y., born October 24, 1809, and died August 5, 1879. He married first, Mary Barnes, born July 26, 1807, died September 2, 1842; second, Eliza Ann Wilson, born July 13, 1812, died September 25, 1866. This cemetery plot, which contains other later members of the family, is number 154 of section 7, and is, where Elijah Horton Cronk was buried prior to his removal to Cypress Hills Cemetery in Brooklyn, N. Y.

A mortgage at White Plains, Liber M, p. 288, shows that on April 25, 1811, Daniel Hawxhurst of Mt. Pleasant and his wife Catherine mortgaged to John Wildey, land in Mt. Pleasant, on the Tarrytown Road, and they had for neighbors Marmaduke Foster, heirs of Ebenezer Wheeler, Abraham Brown and John Kipp. The mortgage was discharged May 16, 1814.

There have been found a few indefinite items that lead one to believe that he was the son of Jesse Hawkhurst, cooper of Westchester County, N. Y., who married in the Presbyterian Church in New York City, November 12, 1772, Jane, widow of Caleb Reynolds (N. Y. Record, Vol. 12, p. 33, and Vol. 33, p. 24). Their children were Caleb, Anne, Jacob, Thomas and Daniel, order not known.

Prior to the Revolution, all lands in Mt. Pleasant belonged to Col. Frederick Philipse and the farmers held leases from him, but towards the close of the war, these lands became invested in the State of New York, the act being passed October 22, 1779 (History of Westchester County, N. Y., by Scharf, Vol. 2, p. 284. The deeds at White Plains do not show where Daniel secured his farm. As he was not born until 1774, he certainly could not have purchased before 1795.

2. Frances Hawkhurst (Hawk), daughter of Daniel and Catherine (Stephens) Hawkhurst, was born near White Plains, N. Y., and died in Brooklyn, N. Y., January 14, 1878, aged 67 years, as the widow of Elijah Horton Cronk (Cronkhite) who died August 16, 1852, aged 42 years. They were married August 23, 1833, and are buried in Cypress Hills Cemetery, Brooklyn, N. Y.

See Cronk.

References:

• Family papers and records of Cypress Hills Cemetery Corporation; New York Record, Vol. April, 1926, p. 114;

• History of Westchester County, N. Y., by Bolton, Vol. 1, p. 696.