Benjamin Hawkins was born in Warren County, North Carolina, on August 15, 1754, and died at the Creek Indian Agency on the Flint River on June 6, 1816. He studied at Princeton and, shortly after the beginning of the Revolution, became a member of General Washington’s staff with the rank of colonel, serving with distinction throughout the war. He was one of North Carolina’s first senators and was noted for his interest in Indian affairs. General Washington asked him to assume jurisdiction over all the Indian tribes south of the Ohio River. At the height of his career, he came to Georgia and established his home among the Creek Indians on the banks of the Flint River in Crawford County. He built the fort later named in his honor on the Ocmulgee River at Macon and lived there while it was being erected, but his permanent home was at the Creek Agency. He was buried on a bluff overlooking the Flint River, where he had lived among the tribes for 16 years as a man of letters, a mediator of peace, and faithful unto death.