HAWKEYE, PULASKI COUNTY, MISSOURI.....

by Peggy Smith Hake

Hand-drawn map of Hawkeye by Peggy Smith Hake
(click to view larger image)

Hawkeye had a strange beginning. The U.S. Postal Service couldn't decide if the little village was located in Pulaski, Miller, or Camden County! From 1882 to 1892, it was listed in Pulaski County; in 1892 and 1893 they had it listed in Camden County; from 1893 to 1897, it was listed in Miller County. Finally, from 1897 until it closed its doors in 1955, the post office was located in Pulaski Country.

The small village was located in the extreme northwest corner of Pulaski with Camden and Miller nearby. Perhaps the post office moved from house to over the years and at different times was actually in all three counties..................

Hawkeye is located in Tavern Township and at one time, there was a school named Hawkeye located about a mile southeast of the town. Storekeepers at Hawkeye during the era 1880-1910 were: Anderson Keeth, Fred Ferguson, Joseph Whittle (my great grandfather), Perry Wyrick (my great uncle), Elijah Strutton, James Wall, Elbert Pemberton, Jack Brumley and Frank Ferguson. About the turn of the 20th century, Fred Ferguson and Joe Whittle both owned a general mercantile store in Hawkeye. Before his death in the early 1980s, I spoke with Uncle Hite Boren of Hawkeye (age 102) and he told me he could remember when Anderson Keeth's store burned and was destroyed.

Fred and Jim Slone were blacksmiths at Hawkeye at the turn of the century. For some time there was a Modern Woodmen of America fraternal organization located upstairs over one of the general stores.

There have been three churches built in and near the town. The first was a Christian (Campbellite) Church built about 1880; the second was a Baptist Church built about a half-mile out of town; and finally the third church built in town was a Baptist Church and it is still in use. The Hawkeye Cemetery is located near the Baptist Church.

During the census of 1910, most of the people living in or near Hawkeye were farmers. Three storekeepers and their families were listed in the census: Perry T. and Carrie (Whittle) Wyrick, Frank and Clara (Groff) Ferguson, and Fred and Effie Ferguson.

There were two schoolteachers enumerated living in the area in 1910: Fred Miles age 22, and Christopher Stewart, age 35. A man by the name of Jackson C. Shahau, 44, from the state of Iowa, was boarding in a local home and gave his occupation as a diamond driller?

The neighborhood of Hawkeye and surrounding countryside was inhabited by the following families in 1910...Ferguson, McDowell, Duff, Shelton, Long, Griffin, Carnes, Miles, Dodson, Boren, Russell, Strutton, Wall, Mashburn, Thompson, Hays, Pemberton, Thornsberry, Wyrick, Lawrence, Stites, Stout and Zumwalt.