The semi-weekly messenger. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1897-1908, 1905-04-18
Scottish Chief.l
Monks Corner, March u. 1870.

Monks Corner, March 81. 1905.
Dear Chief: AS l promised you long
ago. | find myself complying with your
request
As remembered by me from the lips
of my devoted mother and others, my
father and mother We're married at
1919 and spent their first married year
on her plantation in Darlington us
trict, South Carolina. In 1871 thes
moved to North Carolina and located
at Stewartsville. about five miles west
of Maxton. in Scotland county, which
was a sor of halfway house between
Lumberton, Rockingham and Fayette-
vile, and Bennettsville and Society
Hill in South Carolina, and kept IA
house where travellers could be enter
tanned for pay.
In the early spring of 1923 n night
Francis Hawley. "a Connecticut Seth
Thomas clock dealer) stopped and en-
gagged board as a sort of headquarters,
while he could beat around and dis
pense his ware. And until this day
| the Seth Thomas clocks, sold by Fran
! els Hawley, stand as monuments OF
his presence in the old homes of that
community in 1924.
Francis Hawley was a man of good
dress. of good English education, with
fine conversational powers and fluent
in speech; in religion a Baptist; in pol
iticS an abolitionist. though he was
never known to discuss politics in the
presence of negroes; so we may as well
say at once that he was the first apos-
tie of that political creed that ever af-
f1icted that community.
My father was a %fire-eating Demo-
crat equally as rare a specimen OF
new friend, Francis Hawley, and
equally as obnoxious, only he was Il
negro trader.
Francis Hawley placed his church
membership o after his arrival at
Stewartsville, in Spring Hill church.
/ He wOoed and won the hand of Miss
Mary Morrison, an educated, accom-
plished and beautiful young orphan
girl, BORN in the Laurinburg country;
left an orphan when quite young and
was taken to Cheraw, s. c., by some
relative-raised and educated and her
property Spent-waS the pet and uni
versal %favorite with all who knew her;
was married to Francis Hawley in
Laurel Hill church by the Rev. Archi-
bald Mcqueen, ST., Il believe.) In
1924 Hawley moved her to board with
| him at my fathers at Stewartsville in
4 thn old Sfaxvar t horrSn fhau IrnI hon
| PLY, he a Baptist, she a Presbyterian.
He grew in favor and grace in his
! church, until, Yankee like, he began to
NEEDLE with h liberty of conscience
of those old Scotch Baptists on the SUBJ
| ject Of slavery. In this discussion he
frequently told my father that those
old Spring Hill Baptists were such ig-
noramuses that they didn't know that
the ritual of their church was pro slav-
cry; nor did they care, said my father.
In these, the closing days of 1926,
Senator Joe Ray Hawley first saw
light, at Stewartsville-that baby-boy
that grew to manhood and came in one
vote of being the choice of his party
for vice president of the United States
when Chester Arthur was nominated
| Hawley, ST., continued on with his pro
slavery agitation in his church until he
! got all of them good old Baptists hot
in the COLLAR. He on frequent occa-
sions said he was not going to let
these old ignorant Baptists put the rit-
ual under their feet, hat old John
Rodgers went to the stake for, but
would force slavery out of the church..
My father told him frequently that he
was raised among those Spring Hill
Baptists, and it was true that they did
not have much education or chance to