Born in Huddersfield, Yorkshire, England; baptized in 1839; served as presiding elder of Stockport Branch in Cheshire; married Sarah Bradshaw in 1841; immigrated with wife to Nauvoo, Illinois, in 1845; became member of Twenty-Seventh Quorum of Seventy; arrived with his wife in Salt Lake Valley in 1847; called on mission to California in 1849; one of miners at Slap Jack Bar with GQC who were called on mission to Hawai‘i in September 1850; initially assigned to the Big Island; also labored on Maui, Moloka‘i, and O‘ahu; left by his wife (she remarried); released from mission with GQC in July 1854; returned to Utah in 1855 and married Elizabeth Coon; left on second mission to Hawai‘i in 1857 but made it only to San Francisco because of Utah War; served another mission to Hawai‘i accompanied by his wife, 1869–74; one of first settlers of Huntsville, Utah, where he died. (See MMH, biographical sketches; “Obituary Notes,” Deseret Evening News, Jan. 17, 1894; Hawkins, “Autobiography of James Hawkins,” in Seventies Quorum records, Twenty-seventh Quorum; GQC journal, frequent references, Sept. 1850–Sept. 1854.)