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over to Cephas Jr. and Eleazer. Cephas Sr. essentially represented the prototypical success story of his generation, having been born before the birth of the nation, pushing westward several times before settling upon his chosen place, building that into a thrivingmercantile community, then leaving behind many descendants to further what he had made into a respected name. He died on May 18, 1859, at eighty-five, having decidedly made his mark in the world.

    The year their father died, Cephas Jr. and Eleazer constructed the biggest building yet seen in Goshen, a three-story commercial structure into which they moved the hardware store and gradually installedmany of the major Hawks concerns, including the dry goods operation in 1865, the grocery store soon thereafter, the real estate office, the Hawks Coal Company, and the Hawks Electric Company.
    Looking ahead in the mid-1860s to how he could further enhance the economic outlook for the little Midwestern empire his father had founded, Cephas Jr. realized that improved transportation in and out ofGoshen could considerably expand his pool of potential customers. Opening Goshen up to year-round boat transport seemed the best bet, and to do this meant building a hydraulic canal. He encountered a surprising amount of opposition from other local businessmen, but he promoted the idea tirelessly until he not only won approval but secured a contract from the city to build it himself.
    So it cameas little surprise when, after the canal was completed, Cephas and Eleazer announced that they would move their milling operations from Waterford to Goshen. More than ever, due to the increased capacity and improved transportation, the Hawks mill thrived: the facility was greatly enlarged, the latest equipment was continually replacing the old, and the company cranked its capacity up to five hundredbarrels of flour every twenty-four hours, making it one of the biggest operations of its type in the country. As one local historian put it, “No other concern in Goshen contributes more to the prosperity of Goshen than does the Goshen Milling Co.”
    By this time, the other dominant family industry was the Hawks Furniture Company. Established in 1873 by Cephas, Eleazer, Joel, and partner DanielFravel, the operation started small, with eight employees, making inexpensive, unfinished bedstands and tables. But it grew quickly into the second most important business in Goshen, turning out ornate chamber suites of mahogany, bird’s-eye maple, and quartered oak that went out to customers worldwide.
    As the century was drawing to a close, the Hawkses so completely dominated Goshen life andbusiness that writers of the city’s history could barely contain themselves paying them homage. The
Manual of Goshen
proclaimed that the Hawks brothers’ talent for business was so great that “one almost believes they have a perpetual royalty on doing things at precisely the right time, which largely accounts for their bags of golden sheckels.… The historian, like sensible people generally, willjoin in the refrain, ‘Pass up more Hawkses if you would supplant poverty by plenty.’”
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    The year 1891 was a year of wrenching personal loss for the Hawks family. On May 19, Grace, the only surviving daughter of Eleazer and Jennie, who had lost a later daughter in infancy, died suddenly at the age of twenty-three. Exactly a week later, on May 26, Eleazer passed away, at seventy-two. Thisdouble loss left Jennie devastated and, with time, increasingly irrational and difficult; it also left Frank Winchester Hawks a very wealthy twenty-six-year-old. Although involved in the family businesses since graduating from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, Frank had not yet shown either the zeal or the traditional Hawks industriousness to integrate himself into the inner circle of management.With Cephas now seventy-eight, and as involved with his voracious reading as he was with business, control of the Hawks