Esther Hawks

John Milton Hawks (1826 - 1910) was an abolitionist, surgeon and organizer for the assistance of freed blacks and black soldiers during the U.S. Civil War as well as a businessman and Florida settler in Volusia County. During Reconstruction he was secretary of the board of registration for Volusia County. He was also clerk of the Florida House of Representatives from 1868 to 1870. A plaque in his honor is located at the Edgewater City Hall at 104 North Riverside Drive in Edgewater, Florida. Hawks wrote The East Coast of Florida: A Descriptive Narrative, published in 1887 by L.J. Sweett and/ or Lewis & Winsship He is listed as a Great Floridian. His wife, Esther Jane (Hill) Hawks (1833 - 1906), was also a doctor and helped educate black soldiers and their families. She was an 1857 graduate of the New England Female Medical College.

In addition to being a physician, Hawks was an author, historian, teacher, newspaper publisher, army officer, orange grower, first superintendent of Volusia County Schools and founder of Hawks Park, later renamed Edgewater Park. Esther's diary was found in an attic in 1975 and published as A Woman Doctor's Civil War: Esther Hill Hawks' Diary. It was edited by Gerald Schwartz and covers a period before the Hawks settled in Florida.

Hawks was born on November 26, 1826 in Bradford, New Hampshire to Colburn and Clarissa Brown Hawks. He passed the teacher's exam at age 15, studied medicine two years later while teaching in Georgia and received his medical degree in 1847. Hawks was a doctor and staunch abolitionist in Manchester, New Hampshire until volunteering as a physician to treat freed black soldiers during the Civil War.

In December 1861 he volunteered as a physician in South Carolina to treat escaped slaves in Sea Islands, South Carolina. He established a school for the freed blacks and "recruited most of the 33rd Colored Troops for the Union Army then served as their physician" and "was one of the first to urge emancipation of the slaves and to use them as soldiers." He was appointed Assistant Surgeon with the rank of Major in the Union Army's 33rd Colored Troops. Hawks was then appointed Surgeon of the 21st Colored Troops and practiced in Jacksonville, Florida in 1872 after his service in the U.S. Civil War. He treated former slaves and freedmen, who he had also advocated for before the war.

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