The Hawkins Ranch in Texas

In 1846, James Boyd Hawkins and his family left North Carolina to establish a sugar plantation in Matagorda County, in the Texas coastal bend. Margaret Lewis Furse, a great-granddaughter of James B. and Ariella Hawkins, has mined public records, family archives, and her own childhood memories to compose this sweeping portrait of more than 160 years of plantation, ranch, and small-town life.