Benjamin HAWKINS, Congress, NC (1754-1818)

HAWKINS, Benjamin, (uncle of Micajah Thomas Hawkins), a Delegate and a Senator from North Carolina; born in what was then Granville, later Bute, and now Warren County, N.C., August 15, 1754; attended the county schools; student at the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University) when the Revolutionary War began; acquired a knowledge of French, and, at the request of General George Washington, left school and was appointed to the General’s staff as his interpreter; member, State house of commons 1778-1779, 1784; chosen by the North Carolina legislature in 1780 to procure arms and munitions of war to defend the State; Member of the Continental Congress 1781-1783 and 1787; appointed by Congress to negotiate treaties with the Creek and Cherokee Indians in 1785; delegate to the State constitutional convention which ratified the Federal Constitution in November 1789; elected to the United States Senate and served from November 27, 1789, to March 3, 1795; appointed Indian agent for all the tribes south of the Ohio River by President Washington in 1796 and held the office until his death in Crawford County, Ga., on June 6, 1818; interment on a plantation near Roberta, Crawford County, overlooking the Flint River.

Bibliography

American National Biography; Dictionary of American Biography; Grant, C.L. “Senator Benjamin Hawkins: Federalist or Republican?” Journal of the Early Republic 1 (Fall 1981): 233-47; Hawkins, Benjamin. Letters, Journals and Writings. Edited by C.L. Grant. Savannah: Georgia Historical Society, 1980.

Source: Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1771-Present