Hawfield

Captain William Crenshaw’s Farm
Until he died in 1897
In 1948 its 2760 acres lay abandoned
Its antebellum manor burned

Its pastures unfenced and weedy
Grown up in cedars its ditches clogged
its old oaks filled with Minnie balls
Its ancient glory hidden

But its beauty merely slept
For it lay gently rolling
Just east of the Blue Ridge
In the county of Orange

Seven miles from its seat
Of the same name
In the verdant piedmont of Virginia
A land most desired for farming by the wise founders

Jefferson, Madison, Monroe
In 1948 It was bought
By Virginia’s Game Commission
With hopes of restoring it to glory

But soon it was clear
Restoring would exceed
The Commission’s meager budget
From Pittman-Robertson

What to do? ….
In 1952 as the General Assembly’s session ended
A bold man stepped forward
To do what Virginia could not

That bold man was Guy H. Lewis, Jr.
A road builder who loved bird dogs and places to hunt them
In one day he convinced the General Assembly to sell him Hawfield
Then he went to work with a vengeance to remake it

Turn it into a quail paradise
And a place to grow grain and hay
To feed his cows on Quail Haven Farm
Twenty miles away

He used his graders dozers and pans
When not building highways
All around DC
To transform Hawfield utterly

From run down wreck
to quail paradise
While adding four
Big fishing lakes

Lewis laid out three one-hour courses
Start and finish near headquarters
Built a clubhouse and gave it
To the ladies of the Grange

In exchange for serving trialers lunches
Soon word spread far and wide
That Hawfield held the best of grounds
With wild quail lurking everywhere

For fifteen years Hawfield hosted
The Virginia Amateur spring and fall
NA Championships for shooting and all-age dogs
Regional Championships and then

In 1960 the National Open Shooting Dog Championship Inc.
Was here birthed by Lewis, Parke Brinkley,
Steve Richardson, Harold Crane,
Frank Baugh and Verle Farrow

It ran at Hawfield through 1969 when
With Guy Lewis’s death at only 59 in ‘67
The wheels came off the Hawfield wagon
and Guy’s sons Stuart and Guy III

Had to sell it for estate taxes
a sad, sad day
A Golden Era ended
For field trials in Virginia