In February 1846, Hawxhurst, his brother Job and their families moved to Fairfax County, Virginia, where they jointly farmed 470 acres in the Vale section (about 6 miles north of the Courthouse).
Strong Union men during that conflict, they were forced to flee across the Potomac River to Washington (and sent their children to New York relatives) months after Virginia seceded in April 1861.
Like Restored Governor Francis Harrison Pierpont (whose grandfather had grown up in the Fairfax Friends Meeting before leaving to enlist in the American Revolutionary War), Hawxhurst was considered a relatively Moderate Republican, despite his long-held abolitionist views.
[6] At that convention, John Hawxhurst proposed immediate and uncompensated emancipation for slaves (with the approval of all but one of his fellow Loyalist delegates) as well as a system of free public schools as was common in New England and New York.
[7] Hawxhurst also represented Fairfax County at the General Assembly at Alexandria December 5, 1864 – March 7, 1865, and from June 19–23, 1865 in Richmond after the Confederate surrender.
[8] In January 1866, Hawxhurst and Roberts (who had been elected Sheriff of Fairfax County) testified before a Reconstruction Committee led by U.S. Representative Thaddeus Stevens.
President Andrew Johnson (from Tennessee) disagreed with that assessment, and soon vetoed a bill to extend the life of the Freedmen's Bureau and later a Civil Rights Act.
Hawxhurst was the only Quaker delegate, John Crenshaw having been defeated by African-American Burwell Toler to represent Hanover County, Virginia.
[16] After Governor Pierpont was deposed by the federal administration early in Reconstruction, Hawxhurst lobbied to become his successor, but General Henry H. Wells was chosen instead.
Other Quakers elected to that General Assembly session were Senator Thomas E. Taylor (1832–1892) of Goose Creek Meetinghouse (representing Loudoun, Prince William and part of Fairfax County) and Delegate John B. Crenshaw (b.
As a member of the Alexandria Friends Meeting, he may be buried in an unmarked grave at Woodlawn Quaker Meetinghouse or at the former burial ground, on which what is now the Kate Waller Barrett branch library was built in 1937.