In 2026 I will be exploring early Sabbatarian Adventists in the states that now comprise the Mid-America Union. There is no way to know who the first Millerite or Adventist was in each state. Instead, I will feature the first people to write to the Advent Review and Sabbath Herald (forerunner of the Adventist Review) from the territories or states in what is now the Mid-America Union.
The origins of the first seventh-day Sabbath-keeper to write to the Advent Review and Sabbath Herald from Missouri are difficult to determine. There is some question as to whether Thomas Langford Hawkins was born in Kentucky, where his father settled, or Virginia, where the family originated. The date of his birth is equally questionable. Census records suggest he was born in 1785. His obituary claims he was born around 1783. His ancestors were among the wealthy citizens of central Virginia, and there is some indication that his father dealt in land speculation and was known to sell enslaved people. Thomas Hawkins left this unsavory past behind when he joined the Army on December 14, 1812, during the War of 1812.
Soldier Pioneer
As a first lieutenant in the ordnance department, Hawkins was sent north to Ohio. According to his wife’s statement in her declaration to receive a widow’s pension, Hawkins was at Fort Meigs (in Perrysburg, near Toledo) during its April and July 1813 sieges. Thereafter, he saw service around the region, including Detroit, Michigan, and installations in Franklinton (now a neighborhood in Columbus), and Cincinnati. He is alleged to have been at the Battle of Lundy’s Lane on July 25, 1814. Following the end of the war, Hawkins was transferred to Fort Stephenson in present day Fremont, Ohio. He resigned his commission on January 31, 1816, but remained in what was then known as Lower Sandusky, later renamed Fremont. Thus, upon his death in 1862, the Findlay Jeffersonian claimed that he was “one of the earliest settlers of” Fremont, Ohio, and that “few persons in Sandusky county were better known or more respected” (May 30, 1862).
While stationed in Franklinton, Hawkins married Nancy Ann Broderick on November 15, 1814. They had eight children, at least four of whom lived to adulthood: James Montgomery, Thomas Langford Jr., Edmund C., and Jane Grant. The names of the first three children are unknown, and the fate of the youngest, Hannah, is also a mystery.
Methodist, Poet, Millerite
Settled in the new town of Fremont, Hawkins made a name for himself through a number of activities. He took up cabinetry and furniture-making, a trade in which his sons followed him for a time. He participated in the survey of Fremont’s “Sandusky” tract in 1817, the first addition to the original town plot. He was also known for writing poetry, much of which appears to have been advertising jingles for his products. However, one piece of a more sentimental nature commemorated the return of “Old Betsy”—a cannon used at Fort Stephenson during the War of 1812—to Fremont. He published a volume of his poetry in 1853, which he called Poetic Miscellany and World’s Wonder. (Columbus, OH: Scott and Bascom, printers)
In 1821, Hawkins experienced a religious conversion in which he “embraced vital piety, and enlisted in the army of the Lord, in which service he continued until discharged by death” (Fremont Weekly Journal, May 9, 1862). From this time, he was recognized as a Methodist minister, although an association with a particular congregation or circuit remains elusive.
Hawkins joined the Millerites in 1843. He supported the Advent Herald for a few years. However, by 1850, he appears to have disassociated himself from the former Millerites. An anonymous letter, published in the Fremont Weekly Freeman for its entertainment value—it was poorly written—accused Hawkins and others of disfellowshipping a man for “express[ing] his views upon the spedy coming of our Savour Lord and Jesus Christ” (January 5, 1850).
In October 1853, Joseph Bates visited Sandusky County as part of a speaking tour of northern Ohio. In the company of Ira Day of Milan, Ohio, he made a point to become “acquainted with ministers and lay brethren who had been in the Advent doctrine in 1843, and had lost their interest in theses precious truths since the ending of the 2300 days of Daniel’s vision in 1844” (Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, November 1, 1853). Although not mentioned by name, Hawkins was probably one of these minsters. When John N. Loughborough visited Fremont, Ohio, in December 1853, he mentioned that Hawkins had been keeping the Sabbath since Bates’ visit. Hawkins’ financial contributions are also noted in the Advent Review and Sabbath Herald (May 16, 1854). When Bates returned to Sandusky County in the fall of 1854, Hawkins assisted him, traveling with him to some of the outlying communities.
After residing in Fremont, Ohio, for nearly forty years, thirty of which he had been a Methodist minister, Thomas and Ann Hawkins joined their youngest son, Edmund, and his family in Clay County, Missouri, in 1856.
Lonely in Missouri
Information regarding the reasons several of the Hawkins children moved westward is unavailable. While Edmund attempted to farm in Missouri, older brother James moved to Vinton in Benton County, Iowa, where he owned both a farm and a hardware store. By the time of his death, he was considered one of the town’s wealthiest citizens.
Slave-holding Missouri was not a comfortable place for the northern Hawkins family in the years leading up to the Civil War. In 1858 Thomas Hawkins wrote to the Review,
It appears to me that God has given over the slave States to the great enemy of man. The seducing spirits of these last days meddle not with the Southern States; they seem to think no struggle required there. I have not seen in all the subscribers for the Review one from these States. Am I too harsh in this conjecture? If so, I hope forgiveness. Pray for the aged and lonely, waiting redemption.
Hawkins felt even more alone in his practice of keeping the seventh-day Sabbath. “I am, as far as I know, a lonely commandment-keeper in this State, (cursed with slavery.)” Yet, he hailed
with great joy the true explanation of the Sanctuary, which has removed all obscurity from the seeming mystery of prophecy, given a double impetus to the doctrine of the immediate return of the noble-man, brought down upon a slumbering, guilty world, the awful emphasis of the third and last message of mercy, and produced a perfect resurrection of the two tables of God’s righteous law.
Nearing seventy, he was also feeling his age.
I am sorry to say I have not been as zealous during my stay in this slave state as I should have been. My only excuse is my extreme feebleness in decline of life, the want of muscular action and energy; but I will endeavor to let my example and private conversation still proclaim a coming Saviour which has by the grace of God made at least one Sabbath proselyte. (Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, April 22, 1858)
The outbreak of the American Civil War likely prompted Thomas and Ann to join their eldest son, James, in Vinton, Iowa. Pro-Confederate sympathizers were not comfortable neighbors for a man that the Fremont Weekly Journal noted for “his unswerving love of liberty, both of speech and action” (May 9, 1862). Edmund moved further west to Kansas.
In December 1861, Benjamin L. Snook visited Adventists around Vinton, Iowa, among them an elderly Thomas L. Hawkins. Snook reported:
Here I had the pleasure of becoming acquainted with our aged brother Hawkins, formerly of Ohio. It was refreshing to me to meet and hold a sweet season of communion with one so well acquainted with his Creature, who is to him the rod and staff of comfort in his declining years. His aged heart rejoiced much when we talked of the good country to which we are all going, where God’s people will bloom and survive with the freshness and vigor of perpetual youth, and never be bowed down under the pressure of old age. He spoke feelingly of his coming out into the truth under the labors of Bro. Bates. O, may these aged and faithful souls yet live to meet Jesus and find a home in the promised land. (Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, December 31, 1861)
In the 1860s Adventists struggled to sustain a company of believers in Benton County where Vinton was located, although evangelists attempted meetings several times with small successes. This may be why a lonely, nearly eighty-year-old Hawkins chose to continue worshipping with a congregation of Methodists for the fellowship they supplied. He had just arrived at a Methodist Episcopal “love fest” on Sunday morning, April 27, 1862, when he suffered a stroke. He lingered for twenty-four hours, dying on Monday, April 28, 1862, in Vinton, Iowa.
