John Milton Hawks

He passed the teacher's exam at age 15, studied medicine two years later while teaching in Georgia and received his medical degree in 1847.

Hawks was a doctor and staunch abolitionist in Manchester, New Hampshire, until volunteering as a physician to treat freed black soldiers during the Civil War.

[6] He established a school for the freed blacks[5] and "recruited most of the 33rd Colored Troops for the Union Army then served as their physician" and "was one of the first to urge emancipation of the slaves and to use them as soldiers."

Hawks was then appointed Surgeon of the 21st Colored Troops and practiced in Jacksonville, Florida in 1872 after his service in the U.S. Civil War.

[6] Sandy soil proved a challenge and corruption is believed to have caused supplies to be stolen before being delivered to the settlement which soon failed.

A report found the colonists who remained in poor condition and surviving by eating coutee or coontie (the starchy roots of a native plant), palmetto cabbage and fish they caught.

[6] Esther continued teaching after the colony's decline, but in January 1869 a new schoolhouse was torched and in 1870 she returned to New England to practice medicine.