Dr. Salathiel Hawkins

Notes:

According to the 12th Surveyors District Index Williamson Hawkins had 1 deed for 929 acres in Henry County, Tennessee. He would not have been allowed to move to this area until the Jackson Purchase about 1818, so he must have been born somewhere else. John D. Hawkins was also listed as having 1 deed for 42 acres. John D. was probably Williamson's father or brother.
http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=:1072059&id=I50072934

Died:
Murder of Williamson Hawkins
10 May 1839

This tragic-comedy episode results in the first legal hanging in Jackson county Missouri.

In 1833, Williamson Hawkins bought land on the "Little Blue" river to build a sawmill and in one way or another, became very prosperous. He also had a wife whom he was very fond of "Beating" that is. She did not share his enthusiasm for this pastime.

The fond couple found time between chastisements to have a numbe of children, but Rebecca Hawkins, the recipient of these endearments, rather resented the regular thumping bestowed upon her by her doting husband. She thought to terminate the affair by using "rat-poison" to season Williamson's vittles. However, he was the personification of the Hardy Pioneer, and continued to thrive upon the diet. Rebecca determined to speed up the action and engaged an accomplice from her husbands saw mill: Henry Garster.

Kansas City Times 2 March 1878 records:
"The murdered man, Hawkins, was a well-to-do miller. His wife became tired of him beating her, and after two attempts to poison her husband, hired Garster to shoot him. She stole $100 dollars from her husband with which to pay the murderer for his brutal act. She then took out a portin of the chinking from between the logs of the house they lived in so her accomplice could shoot her husband from the outside. Hawkins was shot while he sat by the fireplace, the weapon used being an old-fashioned squirrel-rifle. Garster was tried and found guilty."

On December 4, 1838, the widow Hawkins and Henry Garster were both indicted for murder by poisoning, the charges on this count were dismissed. Rebecca asked for and received bail, but Henry was remanded to jail, He tunneled out of the old log jail-house in Independence, but was apprehended in southwest Missouri; a born loser.

Rebecca had "Friends"; people with prospects of large inheritances always have friends. Large inheritances mean large administration fees, profitable guardianships, and years of execution. She needed "powerful friends" for the changes of venue, continuances, bail money and postponements were expensive. She was tried for the "shooting" murder and found Guilty. Sentenced to Five years in prison, judgment was appealed July 1841. Rebecca never went to jail- the innocent are always protected by Providence. By 1850 Williamson Hawkins estate was still being administered by his son Pendleton.

The miscreant, Henry Garster, was given his day in court and was hung on 10 May 1839. He was taken to the town commons in a wagon seated on his coffin driven by Sheriff John King. King had a vested interest in the demise of Garster: a surety bond was issued involving 160 acres of land for the sum of $150 dollars to Garster's defense attorney. Upon Garster's hanging, the land would fall to the contributors. Four days after the hanging, John King appeared before the Jackson Co. Court with the surety bond to record his deed. It had been recorded the same day it was drawn up.

Vol. X (June 1974) of the West Port Historical Quarterly
Compiled by William A. Goff from Jackson County Historical Society Archives, Independence, Missouri.

http://trees.ancestry.com/tree/21791047/person/18032843757/media/3?pgnum=1&pg=0&pgpl=pid%7cpgNum

(also see notes for wife, Rebecca Littleton Butts)

Williamson married Rebecca Littleton Butts in 1818 in Tennessee. Rebecca (daughter of James Henry Thomas Butts and (1st wife of Henry) Butts) was born in 1800 in Georgia; died after 1861 in California. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Residence: 1838, Blue, Independence, Jackson Co, Missouri

Notes:

Rebecca, an illiterate mother of five and pregnant with her sixth child, had no choice but to follow her husband, Williamson Hawkins, when he picked up and moved his family west from their Tennessee home in 1830. They traveled by wagon and settled in newly created Jackson County where Hawkins began accumulating land. Within eight years, he retained 1,680 acres of land, including two gristmills and ten slaves.

The chain of events that follows took place along the Little Blue River where today stands the Eastland Shopping Center at the confluence of M-291 and I-70 Highways.

During this time, Rebecca bore three more children, and the family appeared to be living solid, hardy, pioneer lives. But, under the surface lurked a dirty secret. For nearly 20 years?all her married life?Rebecca Hawkins suffered the physical abuses inflicted by her husband. She was a battered homemaker. It was common knowledge in the small, rural Jackson County community that her husband, under the influence of whiskey, routinely beat and whipped Rebecca, as proved through historical documents by biographer William B. Bundschu, in his book, Abuse and Murder on the Frontier: The Trials and Travels of Rebecca Hawkins: 1800-1860.

In 1838, Rebecca sought a home remedy to her desperate situation. She stirred white arsenic ratsbane poison into her husband?s coffee. Her initial attempt to end the attacks by removing the attacker failed (and there?s evidence she may have tried twice). Still, Williamson, ill from the effects of an unknown plague, made out a lengthy Last Will and Testament.

Meanwhile, Rebecca resorted to Plan B. She paid $150 to her next-door neighbor, Henry Garster, to administer another form of poison?a lethal dose of lead poisoning by way of a gun. Rebecca assisted Garster by removing a portion of the mud chinking between the logs of her house by the side of the chimney through which Garster took aim with a squirrel rifle and shot Williamson in the heart while he was sitting asleep before the fireplace.

Unfortunately for Garster, he was tracked to his house by footprints he left in a light layer of snow, and ultimately paid for his part with his life in the first legal hanging in Jackson County in 1839. Rebecca was arrested at the time of Williamson?s burial and later tried and acquitted on charges of aiding the murder. But, she was convicted on charges of poisoning based on testimony quoting a conversation with her own slave, Mary.

http://trees.ancestry.com/tree/21791047/person/18032843757/media/1?pgnum=1&pg=0&pgpl=pid%7cpgNum

James married (1st wife of Henry) Butts about 1798 in Georgia. (1st was born about 1780; died after 1810. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]