Hawes was born in Dorchester, Province of Massachusetts, on October 23, 1772,[1] the son of John and Sarah.[2]
Career
In 1816, Hawes founded the first cotton rag paper mill at North Yarmouth's Second Falls, and ran it with father-and-son duo Henry and George Cox. It operated on the falls (eastern) side of the bridge and the northern side of the river from 1816 until 1821.[3][4]
Then a merchant in Boston, Hawes married Elizabeth Leeds (b. July 30, 1775) on July 13, 1806, in Dorchester. They had two children: Gustavus (1807) and Sarah Elizabeth (1809).[1] After the death of his wife, he moved north to Brunswick, Province of Massachusetts, where he was an agent of a factory.[1]
He married for a second time on May 4, 1817,[5] to Susan Blanchard Russwurm, a twice widower. Her first husband, James Humphrey Blanchard, died in Montreal in 1812; her second, John R. Russwurm, died in Back Cove in 1815. With Susan, Hawes had the following children: Marcia Scott (1818), Clarissa (1820), Joseph (1822), Mary Goold (1824), Matilda (1827), William (1832) and Elizabeth Russwurm (1835). Susan already had three children — Ann, Susan and James — from her first marriage, and one — Francis Edward Russwurm (b. 1814) — with her second husband.[1] (To hold property in the West Indies, John Russwurm married "a colored woman", with whom he had John Brown Russwurm in 1799.)[1][5] At this stage, there were four intertwined bloodlines from the various marriages. He was known to say he "had nine children, and my wife has eleven, and but thirteen all counted."[1]
12The Struggles of John Brown Russwurm: The Life and Writings of a Pan-Africanist Pioneer, 1799–1851, Winston James and John Brown Russwurm (2010), p. 258
