Louisa Hawkins Canby - Early Life of A Military Wife

Early Life of A Military Wife

Louisa Hawkins, was born December 25, 1818 at Paris, Kentucky, to John and Elizabeth (Waller) Hawkins. Relatives and close friends usually called her "Lou." Like the family of Louisa's future husband, the Hawkinses moved from Kentucky to Indiana. After graduating from Georgetown Female College in Georgetown, Kentucky, Louisa married Lt. E.R.S. Canby at Crawfordsville, Indiana on August 1, 1839. The Hawkins family apparently had a strong attraction to the military. Louisa’s younger brother, John Parker Hawkins, was a West Point graduate, served during the Civil War, and retired a brigadier general in 1894. At least two of Louisa’s three sisters also married military officers (who happened to be brothers).

A Methodist, Louisa was very religious but also ecumenical: she once helped a Protestant marry a Catholic in spite of the controversy stirred up by the union. At her husband's funeral service in Portland, Oregon, she arranged to have clergymen representing three Protestant denominations share in the service. (A fourth clergyman, feeling less ecumenical, bowed out.) At the final funeral service in Indianapolis, Indiana, a Baptist and a Methodist shared duties.

During E.R.S. Canby’s military career, Louisa joined him on assignments with the almost sole exception of the Mexican-American War. In his memoirs, William Tecumseh Sherman recalls the arrival of the Canbys at Monterey, California, in early 1849 where then-Major Canby succeeded Sherman as adjutant-general of the military Department of California. The Canbys, with their six year-old daughter, Mary (who died in childhood), took up residence in Monterey which was then the military headquarters for California. (Benicia, California was soon added as the headquarters for the Pacific.) About this time, Louisa met Lt. Col. Henry Stanton Burton, who became involved in controversy when he proposed marriage to Maria Amparo Ruiz, the granddaughter of the former Mexican governor of Baja California. (She was a remarkable woman in her own right: widely admired for her beauty and aristocratic carriage, she later became a successful novelist.) The announcement of their engagement set off a firestorm as the Roman Catholic Bishop of California condemned the union (Burton was a Protestant), and the governor declared that "all the authorities of California are not to authorize any marriage when either of the parties is a Catholic." Louisa offered the couple the use of the Canby home where their marriage took place on July 7, 1849. Major Canby, who had begun a tour of northern California on July 2 and did not return to Monterey until August 9, was forced to explain that he had taken no part in the affaire and that his wife, a civilian, had acted alone.

During the two years the Canbys were in the territory, California applied for statehood. Both Canbys contributed to this effort unofficially, Mrs. Canby by copying documents for the statehood convention and Major Canby by arranging and partially indexing territorial records.

Almost a decade later, in 1859, while Colonel Canby was commander of Fort Bridger, Utah Territory (now in the state of Wyoming), the Canbys spent an enjoyable Christmas with Captain Henry Hopkins Sibley a charming but volatile Louisianan who had graduated from West Point a year ahead of Canby. It is not certain whether Louisa had met Sibley previously although many rumors ranging from the outlandish (that Louisa was Sibley’s sister) to the plausible (that her husband could have been best man at Sibley's 1840 wedding) would circulate on the Union side during 1862. Canby and Sibley certainly had crossed paths previously: Canby served on a court-martial panel that exonerated Sibley in 1858, and he subsequently endorsed Sibley’s invention, the Sibley tent, which would be widely used during the Civil War. (The two men could have known each other earlier since both were at West Point and served in Florida and Mexico at about the same times, but it is uncertain whether they knew each other before the late 1850s.)