🔒Remembering Robert Hawkins: A Stow golf club and a nonprofit are seeking to revive the legacy of the founder of New England’s first Black-owned golf course

Just shy of a century ago, a man named Robert Hawkins bought a 160-acre plot of land in Stow and its adjoining mansion at the site.

Hawkins then opened Mapledale Country Club in 1926, making it the first Black-owned golf course in New England and one of the first in the nation. Its opening came during an era of racial segregation where Black golfers were barred from some country clubs. Those policies that didn't loosen for decades, such as when the PGA removed its Caucasian-only clause in 1961.

Mapledale's legacy and cultural impact on the sport and the region has led a small nonprofit and the golf facility now operating at the site – Stow Acres Country Club – to seek to revive that history ahead of the 100th anniversary of its founding.

“It's not just golfers [who] need to know what happened. We feel like everybody needs to know what happened at Stow,” said David Carlson, director of golf at Stow Acres.

Today, the Stow nonprofit Rediscover Mapledale is working to develop curriculum, set up historic markers, and engage the community to celebrate Hawkins’ patrimony. Founded in November 2022 by Stow residents Kelly Lawlor and Stacen Goldman, the nonprofit has grown to an eight-person board.

The centennial celebration of Mapledale will help highlight the intimate connection between Black Americans and the history of golf, which remains largely unknown, said Robert Bellinger, public historian and owner of Righting Histories in Lexington.

“You see how much history is hidden in plain sight,” said Bellinger.

A trailblazing legacy

More than just a golf course, Mapledale was a country club for people of color, and it was the only one of its kind and caliber in the country, said Bellinger, a Rediscover Mapledale board member.

Mapledale featured a swimming pool, tennis courts, trap shooting, horseback riding, and areas for sports such as croquet and a toboggan run in the winter. The 18-room mansion on the property was converted into a clubhouse with a restaurant, banquet hall, and rooms for guests to stay. The club had reasonable membership rates, making it accessible for those in the community, he said.

With courses at the time restricting Black people’s participation to the role of caddie, Bellinger said Hawkins offered Black golfers an important opportunity.

“He gave them a place to go play,” said Tarek "Ty" DeLavallade, executive director of the United Golfers Association in Florida and a Rediscover Mapledale member.

The UGA was formed by Black men and women in an effort to advance equity within the sport. Hawkins was a founding member.

Mapledale became a national focal point for Black golfers as the club hosted the first three UGA championships, drawing golfers from New Jersey to the Midwest.

“Even though he only owned the property for a few years, just the fact that he even tried to do it … was a great feat, but also something that was encouraging to others,” said DeLavallade. “They knew that this is something that could also be done.”

Three years after its opening, Mapledale closed. The closure was mainly twofold, said Bellinger: a result of the onset of the Great Depression and the club’s distance from a large Black community to support it. In addition, Bellinger found in his research Hawkins had said the news media had spread misinformation about his club.

“When people don't understand something, all kinds of ideas about it can be spread,” said Bellinger.

Rediscovering Hawkins

The Boston Globe’s 1973 obituary of Hawkins makes no mention of Mapledale, simply stating he had worked at a number of golf clubs throughout his life.

Carlson, the golf director at Stow Acres, had been working at the club for 24 years before he learned of Hawkins and Mapledale. Once he learned of the club’s past, he felt a responsibility to disseminate the history of the land he was literally standing on. He joined Rediscover Mapledale shortly after.

The loss of his legacy is not a function of Hawkins himself, but rather that the connection between Black Americans and golf has been overlooked, said Bellinger.

While there was a resurgence in interest of the connection when Tiger Woods rose to prominence in the late 1990s, the extent to which Black golfers have contributed and shaped the sport of golf has been mainly passed over, he said.

Many don’t realize the first American-born professional golfer was Black, said Bellinger. John Shippen, a Black golfer from Washington, D.C. was the first American-born golfer to compete in the U.S. Open in 1896. At the time, Shippen was a caddie at Shinnecock Hills Golf Club in New York, banned from being a member himself because the club was restricted to white members. Native American golfer Oscar Bunn was sent to the U.S. Open with him, but Bunn is not recognized as one of the first American-born professional golfers because Native Americans were not recognized as U.S. citizens at the time.

With this context in mind, Rediscover Mapledale is seeking to elevate Hawkins and Mapledale through efforts on and off the course.

The nonprofit helped get the path along Stow Acres’ south course to be named Mapledale Trail with signage marking the country club’s original name. The organization is waiting for the ground to soften to distribute historic markers on the golf course and trail detailing its history with pictures of Hawkins, old newspaper clippings, and aerial shots of the land. Historic tours of the courses are in the works.

Rediscover Mapledale has contracted anti-racist educator and author Lorena German to create a curriculum surrounding Hawkins and Mapledale to hopefully be used within local school districts. Because of the depth and reach of Hawkins’ story, the organization can see the educational materials being used in classes covering history, sports, and math.

“He was able to do something that really hadn't been done before,” DeLavallade said.

Mica Kanner-Mascolo is a staff writer at Worcester Business Journal, who primarily covers the healthcare and diversity, equity, and inclusion industries.