Francis L. HawksFrancis Lister Hawks was an American author, historian, teacher, and priest in the Episcopal Church. He was born on June 10, 1798, and died on September 26, 1866. Hawks became an Episcopal priest in 1827 after a distinguished career as a lawyer and ashort time as a politician in North Carolina. He was a brilliant and impressive preacher, holding livings (a church benefice with income) in New Haven, Philadelphia, New York City, and New Orleans and turning down several bishoprics. But scandals in the 1830s and 1840s sent him to work on the American border and got him turned down for the job of bishop of Mississippi. Hawks was the first president of the University of Louisiana, which is now called Tulane University. Hawks later moved to Baltimore, Maryland, and then back to New York City. The most important things Hawks did now seem creative. He put together the one-volume Appletons' Cyclopaedia of Biography (1856), which added American biographies to the book that Elihu Rich had put together and that was released by Richard Griffin & Company in 1854. Hawks' writings about church history are still important today. Hawks went to England after being named the Episcopal Church's historian in 1835 to gather information that he later used in his book Contributions to the Ecclesiastical History of U.S.A. (New York, 1836–1839). Read More Read Less