Rush Hawkins collection (Ms.2006.05)

Biographical/Historical Note

Rush Christopher Hawkins was born September 14, 1831 in Pomfret, Vermont. His father died at age eight, leaving him an orphan. This state of affairs did not prevent him from beginning to amass a collection that would come to include manuscripts, books, periodicals, broadsides, and art while still a young boy. Nor did it deprive him of an education during his early years. As a youth he attended local common schools. He was likewise a student at the Norwich Military Academy in Vermont for a period of time.

At age sixteen Hawkins relocated to Boston and while still a minor enlisted in the 2nd U.S. Dragoons and served in the Mexican War. In the years following the conflict he traveled widely in the United States and moved to New York state. Here Hawkins took up the study of the law in 1851 and became an attorney prior to 1860. On June 30 of that year he married Annmary Brown, the granddaughter of Nicholas Brown, for whom Brown University is named. With the outbreak of the Civil War Hawkins raised and accepted a commission as colonel of the 9th New York Volunteer Infantry regiment, which came to be known as Hawkins's Zouaves. He served credibly, though often embroiled in controversy with his superiors, until being mustered out of the service along with his regiment in 1863. In the years after the war Hawkins lived in New York, served a term in the New York state legislature in 1872 as a reformer, was a deputy U.S. marshal, and earned great wealth via real estate and various investments. He also became prominent in the worlds of art and incunabula and his collection of the later came to be second only to that held by the British Museum.

In 1886 Hawkins donated his eleven hundred-book and pamphlet Civil War collection to the University of Vermont in Burlington. This Rush C. Hawkins Civil War Collection is housed at the Bailey Howe Library and is under the control of the University's Special Collections Department (802-656-2138).

In 1907 he built the Annmary Brown Memorial located at 21 Brown Street, Providence, as a memorial to his deceased wife. It was designed as a tomb for the couple (both are interred there), and to house Hawkins's collection of incunabula, paintings, manuscripts, books authored by or written about individuals with the surname of Hawkins, travel books, bibliographies, biographies, standard histories, books on printing wood engravings, and volumes on the early history of printing. Hawkins died at St. Vincent Hospital in New York in 1920 after being struck by an automobile. Twenty-four years later the Memorial was deeded to Brown University. In 1990 the entire collection, with the exception of the paintings, was transferred to the John Hay Library. Sometime thereafter Hawkins's renowned incunabula collection, his several thousand-count book collection, as well as a large manuscript collection featuring many historically valuable documents were made available to researchers at the John Hay Library.