Bio: Hawkes, Charles E. (1938)

Contact: Dolores Mohr Kenyon

Email: dolores@wiclarkcountyhistory.org

Surnames: Hawkes, Hoffman

----Source: Clark County Press (Neillsville, Clark Co., WI.) August 13, 2008

Hawkes, Charles E. (1938)

From the August 13, 2008 Good Old Days of the Clark County Press, recounting 1938 news:

Charles E. Hawkes, a national figure in the printing industry of the country for some years and who started his life’s work as a printer in Neillsville when he took a printer’s job on the old Neillsville Republican and Press July 1, 1878, stopped in Neillsville Thursday to call on a few remaining old friends here and visited the former family home near Shortville. 

Horace and Everett Hoffman were the publishers of the Republican and Press when Mr. Hawkes started work here and the following year he went to work for L. B. Ring, who started the True Republican in 1879.

After leaving Neillsville, Mr. Hawkes went to River Falls Normal School and won the appointment to the naval academy at Annapolis, where he spent two years.  He then worked 15 years on Pacific Coast newspapers. Returning to Chicago and then New York, he helped organize the Printers League of America and served as national secretary of the New York local.  This later became a part of the United Typothetae of America.  He was active in helping organize both union workers as well as employers.  In recent years he has served as mayor of Lakewood, N. J., where he now lives and also is a bank officer.

The Hawkes family came to Neillsville in a covered wagon from Mason City, Iowa, in 1872.  Mr. Hawkes recalled terrific forest fires were burning all through here and they nearly choked from smoke before getting to Neillsville.  Large pines, while burning, fell across the road in places.

The family lived in Neillsville for a time and also on a farm near Shortville.  His mother taught school near Shortville and at Loyal among other places.  Mr. Hawkes, with his brother and stepfather, worked in logging camps all up through the county and even above Withee before there were any railroads or highways, having only trails to travel on.  He said he would like to have followed the old trail from Merrillan to Neillsville but was told it had been largely obliterated in the past 66 years.