alluded to in the sketch of Mr. Bryan; studied law and was the reporter of the decisions of the supreme court for five years, (1820 to '26.)
In 1821, he was elected a member of the House of Commons from New Berne, but he resolved to devote himself to the ministry, and was ordained by Bishop Ravenscroft He, in 1827, was assistant minister of Dr. Harry Croswell, of New Haven, Connecticut. In 1829, he was the assistant of Bishop White, at St. James, Philadelphia, and from 1832 to 1834, was the rector of St. Stephen's church, New York; during which period he visited Europe, with an introduction to the Archbishop of Canterbury, to collect material for a history of the Episcopal church in the United States, a fragment of which may be seen in his biography of Bishop White.
From St. Stephen's he passed to St. Thomas in 1832, and continued his connection with this parish until he removed to Mississippi in 1844. He was elected bishop of the diocese; which he declined, as also his election to be bishop of Rhode Island. At the close of 1844, he took charge of Christ church in New Orleans, where he continued for five years, during which time he gave his aid to the establishment of a state university, of which he was made the president. But he was called to fill the pulpit of Cavalry church, and he returned to New York and continued in this charge until 1861; he then resigned because he sympathized with the south, and took charge of a Baltimore church. One of his sons was major in the Confederate army. After the war was over he returned to and preached in the Church of the Annunciation, New York, where he died September 27, 1866.
He married a lady in Connecticut, by whom he had several children.
Dr. Hawks was true to North Carolina and proud of her glorious history.*
* This sketch is compiled
from original documents and from a memorial of F. L. Hawks, DD. LLD., by Everitt
A. Duyckinck. read before New York Historical Society. May, 1867. "Cyclopedia of American
Literature." "Dictionary of American
Biography by Francis S. Drake, 1876."
As a divine, his merits were brilliant and unsurpassed. An agreeable address, an amiable and placid countenance, a deep toned voice, expressive of pathos and feeling, modulated and eloquent in all its utterances, a warm southern sensibility and all marked with manly frankness, distinguished Dr. Hawks as one of the first pulpit orators of his age.
As an author he exhibited great learning and laborious research; the most voluminous our state has ever produced. Among his most important works are:
I. Reports of Supreme Court of North Carolina, (1820-'26,) in four volumes.
II. Digest of all the cases decided and reported in North Carolina.
III. Contributions to the Ecclesiastical History of the United States, two volumes, embracing New York, Maryland, and Virginia.
IV. Egypt and her Monuments, (1849.)
V. Auricular Confession in the Protestant Episcopal Church, (1850.)
VI. History of North Carolina, two volumes, (1857.)
VII. Antiquities of Peru, (1854.)
VIII. Official and Other Papers of Alexander Hamilton, (1842.)
IX. Romance of Biography.
X. Appleton's Cyclopedia of Biography.
XI. Journal of General Conventions (1856) of the Protestant Episcopal church of the United States, from 1785.
XII. Under the pseudonym of Uncle Philip, several juvenile works for Harper's "Boys' and Girls' Library."
XIII. He compiled from Perry's original notes "the Narrative of Commodore Perry's Expedition to the China Seas and Japan," (1852.)
XIV. Lecture on Sir Walter Raleigh.
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