Hawks, Matthew H.

Born: 1804-04-04 Clark County, Kentucky

Died: 1882-03-10 Bloomington, Illinois

Flourished: Bloomington, Illinois

Hawks apprenticed and started business as a tailor in Kentucky. He was married to Elizabeth Campbell in 1826, and they had one child together before her death in 1832. In 1834, he re-married to Elizabeth Major, with whom he had three children. Hawks was engaged in the dry-goods business in Kentucky until 1835, when he moved with his in-laws to Washington, Illinois. Soon after, he moved to Bloomington, where he continued as a dry-goods merchant until 1845. At that point, he established a mill to produce linen from flax and to extract linseed oil from flax seed. In 1850, he sold his business and began keeping hotels and boarding houses in Lacon, Pekin, and Bloomington, Illinois.

Gravestone, Evergreen Memorial Cemetery, Bloomington, IL; E. Duis, The Good Old Times in McLean County, Illinois (Bloomington, IL: Leader, 1874), 314-18; U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), McLean County, IL, 21; The History of McLean County, Illinois (Chicago: Wm. Le Baron Jr., 1879), 347.