Michael Hawkins was not just a New Brunswick settler. He was a wounded Loyalist veteran whose life appears to have moved through one of the most dangerous corridors of the American Revolution: New Jersey, British-held New York, the Hudson River war zone, the Spring Fleet of 1783, and finally New Brunswick.
When researching Michael Hawkins, also remembered in family material as John Michael Hawkins, it is tempting to begin his story in New Brunswick.
That is where he settled.
That is where his descendants grew.
That is where later Hawkins family history took root.
But Michael’s own records point us backward — away from New Brunswick, across the sea route of the Loyalist evacuation, and back into the violent New York–New Jersey borderlands of the American Revolutionary War.
His story belongs to what I call the Hudson Corridor Migration.
This was not a simple move from one colony to another. It was a wartime journey from rebellion, danger, service, injury, exile, and survival into a new Loyalist world in British North America.
Michael Hawkins in His Own Words
The most important record for Michael Hawkins is his 1788 land memorial to the government of New Brunswick.
In that petition, Michael stated that he was a native of New Jersey, that he had joined the Royal Army early in the late Rebellion, and that in 1777 he had engaged in Major Ward’s Company of Refugees.
He also stated that, during the defence of the Block House, he received a wound that disabled him for nine months.
Finally, he said that he emigrated to New Brunswick in the May Fleet of 1783.
That short memorial gives us the backbone of his migration story:
New Jersey → Royal Army service → Major Ward’s Refugees → Block House wound → May Fleet of 1783 → New Brunswick
That is the route of a Loyalist survivor.
The Hudson Corridor Was Not Just a Place. It Was a War Zone.
When Michael Hawkins said he was a native of New Jersey, that does not mean his world was limited to one side of a modern state line.
During the American Revolution, the area around New Jersey, Bergen County, Weehawken, Bull’s Ferry, Fort Lee, British-held New York, Long Island, and the Hudson River formed one connected military landscape.
This corridor was full of roads, rivers, landing places, farms, wooded routes, ferry points, safe houses, blockhouses, refugee camps, and contested loyalties.
It was not clean.
It was not peaceful.
It was not distant from the war.
It was the edge.
For Loyalists, the Hudson corridor was both a refuge and a trap. British New York offered protection, but the surrounding countryside was dangerous. Loyalist refugees moved between army lines, river crossings, wooded ground, and military posts. Men who knew the landscape became valuable. They could cut wood, guide troops, scout movement, carry information, and help hold exposed positions.
This is the world where Michael Hawkins appears.
Major Ward’s Company of Refugees
Michael’s memorial places him in Major Ward’s Company of Refugees in 1777.
The word “Refugees” can sound soft to modern ears. It was not soft.
These were Loyalist men living in a brutal borderland world. Many had been driven from their homes or forced into British lines because of their loyalty to King George III. They were not always regular soldiers in the traditional sense. They were men of the ground — men who knew the roads, forests, ferry landings, riverbanks, farms, and families.
Ward’s Company is often associated with woodcutters, but that word should not be dismissed as simple labour.
Wood was essential to the British army. It meant fuel, heat, shelter, transport, and fortification. But woodcutting also gave men a reason to move through dangerous country. A woodcutter could observe roads. A woodcutter could watch enemy movement. A woodcutter could learn who was loyal and who was not. A woodcutter could carry information. A woodcutter could be a scout in plain sight.
In that sense, Ward’s men may have been part of the practical intelligence world of the British army: refugees, woodcutters, scouts, guides, and blockhouse defenders operating under the cover of necessity.
Michael Hawkins was not just standing around waiting for land in New Brunswick.
He was in the machinery of the war.
The Block House Wound
Michael’s memorial says that he was wounded in the defence of the Block House and disabled for nine months.
That detail matters.
Nine months of disability was not a scratch. It suggests a serious wound — the kind of injury that could change a man’s body, his work, his survival, and his memory.
We do not yet know exactly where he was wounded, what kind of wound he suffered, or who treated him. But we do know that, years later, when he petitioned the New Brunswick government, this was one of the facts he chose to present.
He wanted the government to know that he had served.
He wanted them to know that he had suffered.
He wanted them to know that he had paid for his loyalty in blood.
That should not be forgotten.
From the War Zone to the Spring Fleet
After years of war, the Loyalist world in New York collapsed into evacuation.
Michael stated that he came to New Brunswick in the May Fleet of 1783, also commonly remembered as part of the Spring Fleet.
For the purposes of mapping Michael’s journey, the exact ship is not yet confirmed. That means the safest way to describe his route is:
New Jersey / Hudson Corridor war zone → British-held New York evacuation world → Spring or May Fleet of 1783 → Saint John River, New Brunswick
This is why the Hudson Corridor Migration Map matters.
It helps us see Michael’s life as movement:
From the interior danger of New Jersey and the Hudson borderlands,
to the British evacuation world around New York,
across the water with thousands of Loyalist refugees,
to the mouth of the Saint John River,
and finally inland into New Brunswick settlement.
The map turns scattered records into a story.
The 1786 Washademoak Lake Grant
After arrival in New Brunswick, Michael Hawkins appears in a Crown land grant dated 12 May 1786 and registered at Saint John on 18 May 1786.
In that grant, Michael was assigned Lot Number Sixteen on the southeast tract around Washademoak Lake, in Kings and Queens Counties, containing about 200 acres.
This is another important piece of the migration story.
Michael did not simply arrive in New Brunswick and vanish. He entered the Loyalist land system. He became one of the men expected to take wilderness land and turn it into settlement.
The 1786 grant shows how hard that bargain was. Grantees were expected to improve the land: clear it, drain it, keep cattle, build a dwelling house, or otherwise make it productive.
The Crown gave land, but the Loyalist had to survive it.
For Michael Hawkins, the migration did not end when the ship reached New Brunswick. In some ways, that was only the beginning.
The 1788 Land Memorial and the Search for a Better Lot
There is an interesting problem.
Michael was granted Lot 16 at Washademoak Lake in 1786. Yet in 1788, he petitioned for another piece of land: Lot No. 10 on the Madam Kishvie, previously granted to Robert McCargo, who had died.
This raises an important question.
Did Michael not know about the Washademoak Lake grant?
Did he not want it?
Was it too far from where he actually settled?
Was the land unsuitable?
Was he trying to secure land closer to his family, associates, or community?
At this point, the answer is not proven.
But the 1788 memorial is valuable because it tells us how Michael represented himself: native of New Jersey, early Loyalist, Ward’s Refugee, wounded blockhouse defender, and May Fleet immigrant.
That is the identity he carried into New Brunswick.
The New Brunswick Settlement World
The later Hawkins story belongs to the Keswick / Douglas / York County settlement world.
This is where Michael Hawkins and Eleanor Brewer/Brower become part of the New Brunswick Loyalist community. It is also where the Hawkins family connects with other Loyalist families, including the Yerxa / Jurckse family.
John Yerxa, also remembered as Johannes Jurckse, belonged to the Loyalist world of Cortlandt Manor, Westchester County, New York. The Yerxa family later became closely connected with the Hawkins family in New Brunswick.
This matters because it suggests that Michael Hawkins’s world did not consist of disconnected points on a map.
New Jersey.
New York.
Cortlandt Manor.
British lines.
The Spring Fleet.
Saint John.
Keswick.
Douglas.
Washademoak.
These places may represent a larger Loyalist network: families who had known war, displacement, military service, exile, and resettlement.
Why the Hudson Corridor Matters
The Hudson Corridor matters because it helps us stop treating Michael Hawkins as an isolated New Brunswick brick wall.
He was not just “Michael Hawkins of New Brunswick.”
He was:
- a native of New Jersey
- an early supporter of the Royal Army
- a man connected to Major Ward’s Company of Refugees
- a wounded defender of the Block House
- a May Fleet Loyalist immigrant
- a Crown land grantee
- a New Brunswick settler
- the husband of Eleanor Brewer/Brower
- part of the Hawkins-Yerxa Loyalist settlement world
The Hudson Corridor gives us a way to look for him before New Brunswick.
It tells us where to search.
Not just in Canadian records.
Not just in family trees.
Not just in later census material.
But in the wartime world of New Jersey, Bergen County, British New York, Ward’s Refugees, blockhouse defenders, refugee camps, evacuation lists, Loyalist claims, land petitions, and associated families.
A Journey of Hope and Heritage
The Hudson Corridor Migration Map is not meant to prove every relationship. It is meant to show the geography of possibility.
It shows the places that shaped the lives of Michael Hawkins, Eleanor Brewer/Brower, John Yerxa, and the Loyalist families who moved from the Revolutionary War borderlands into New Brunswick.
The map begins in the old world of danger: New Jersey, New York, Cortlandt Manor, Bayard’s Estate, the Spring Fleet departure zone.
It ends in the new world of settlement: Saint John, Washademoak Lake, Keswick, Douglas, and the homestead lands of the Hawkins and Yerxa families.
Between those points lies the story of exile.
Michael Hawkins crossed that distance not as a tourist, not as an adventurer, and not as a nameless settler.
He crossed it as a wounded Loyalist veteran.
A man who had served.
A man who had suffered.
A man who had survived the war.
A man who carried his past into the forests and rivers of New Brunswick.
Research Questions Going Forward
This map raises several important questions:
Where exactly was Michael Hawkins living before he entered Ward’s Company?
What was the precise Block House where he was wounded?
Who else served with him in Ward’s Company of Refugees?
Did he know the Brewer/Brower family before New Brunswick?
Was Eleanor Brewer/Brower part of the same refugee migration network?
Did the Hawkins and Yerxa families know each other before settlement in New Brunswick?
Was Michael’s New Jersey identity connected to the Bergen-Hudson Loyalist world?
Can DNA evidence help identify Michael’s deeper Hawkins line?
These are the questions this project will continue to explore.
Closing
Michael Hawkins deserves to be remembered as more than a name in a land petition.
His life crossed the central geography of Loyalist survival: New Jersey, the Hudson corridor, British New York, the Spring Fleet, and New Brunswick.
The Hudson Corridor Migration Map helps us see that movement.
It gives shape to the story.
It reminds us that Michael Hawkins was not lost in history because he was unimportant. He was lost because his story was scattered across borders, wars, petitions, land grants, family memories, and unfinished research.
This blog exists to bring those pieces back together.
Michael Hawkins was a Loyalist.
A refugee.
A wounded blockhouse defender.
A May Fleet immigrant.
A New Brunswick settler.
And an ancestor whose story deserves to be found.
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