Forbes Hawkes


Robert Forbes Hawkes was an American physician and surgeon who was prominent in New York society during the Gilded Age.

Early life

Hawkes was born in New York City on August 25, 1865. He was the son of Wootton Wright Hawkes, and Eliza DeForest Hawkes. His father was a professor at Trinity College in Connecticut, and an amateur farmer in Sing Sing, New York. His older brother was Emile McDougall Hawkes, who was president of the French Institute in the United States and who married Eva Van Cortlandt Morris, a daughter of Augustus Newbold Morris and the aunt of Newbold Morris and George L. K. Morris.
His paternal grandparents were merchant George Hawkes and Ann Hawkes. His maternal grandparents were merchant William Jehiel Forbes and Charlotte Antoinette Forbes, the daughter of Joel Root, an early entrepreneur and supercargo on the sealing ship Huron. His grandmother Charlotte's sister, Susan Huldah Forbes, was married to Benjamin Silliman Jr., the maternal grandfather of Hawkes' wife Alice Silliman Belknap.
His early education was in Tours and Paris in France, and Marburg, Germany before graduating from Yale University in 1887. After Yale, he attended the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, graduating in 1891.

Career

Following his graduation from Medical School, he did a year of post-graduate work in Vienna and Edinburgh, Scotland. Hawkes interned at New York Presbyterian Hospital. He specialized in gynecology and abdominal surgery.
Hawkes also served as the head of the dispensary for New York Presbyterian Hospital and was a consulting surgeon at the New York Presbyterian Hospital in Queens, the Loomis Sanitarium, North-Western Dispensary and several others. He was also a Professor of Clinical Surgery at the Post-Graduate Hospital.
He was a fellow of the American College of Surgeons and a member of the New York Surgical Society, the American Urological Association, the New York Academy of Medicine, the Hospital Graduate Association, and the Presbyterian Hospital Alumni Association.

Society life

In February 1892, Hawkes was included in Ward McAllister's "Four Hundred", purported to be an index of New York's best families, published in The New York Times. Conveniently, 400 was the number of people that could fit into Mrs. Astor's ballroom. Hawkes was a member of the Union Club of the City of New York, the University Club, the Century Association, and the Piping Rock Club. He belonged to the St. Nicholas Society and was surgeon of the Society of the Cincinnati.

Personal life

On April 25, 1905, Hawkes was married to suffragette Alice Silliman Belknap in Louisville, Kentucky. Alice was the daughter of William Richardson Belknap, the president of the Belknap Hardware and Manufacturing Company, and Alice Trumbull Belknap. Her paternal grandfather was William Burke Belknap and her maternal grandfather was Benjamin Silliman Jr., a professor of chemistry at Yale University who was instrumental in developing the oil industry. Among her siblings was the artist Eleanor Silliman Belknap Humphrey and William Burke Belknap. Together, they lived at 124 East 65th Street and were the parents of:
Hawkes died at his summer home, Briar Patch at Sands Point in Port Washington on Long Island, on August 24, 1940. After a funeral at his home, he was buried at Grove Street Cemetery in New Haven, Connecticut. His widow died in 1972.

Descendants

Through his daughter Eleanor, he was the grandfather of Thomas Ludlow Chrystie, and the great-grandfather of Alice Belknap Chrystie, a doctoral student in educational psychology at Columbia University who married Peter Hunt Wyman in 1983.
Through his son John, he was the grandfather of artist Lars Hawkes, and the grandfather of Peter Hawkes and Martin Hawkes.