John Milton Hawks

John Milton Hawks (November 26, 1826 – April 2, 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.^[1] Hawks wrote The East Coast of Florida: A Descriptive Narrative, published in 1887 by L.J. Sweett^[2] and/ or Lewis & Winsship^[3] He is listed as a Great Floridian. His wife, Esther Hill Hawks, was also a doctor and helped educate black soldiers and their families.^[4] She was an 1857 graduate of the New England Female Medical College.^[5]

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.^[6]