HAWKINS, WILLIAM E. (1863–1937). William E. Hawkins, son of Reverend Samuel J. and Emmeline M. (Burke) Hawkins, was born in Greenwood, Louisiana, on September 26, 1863. He attended the University of Louisiana (now Tulane University) in 1881 and 1884 and graduated from Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas. On November 11, 1886, he married Ella Dickason. He taught in Dallas, where he studied law in the office of Judge Seth Shepard and was admitted to the Texas bar in 1887. Hawkins worked as a lawyer in Dallas until 1905, when he was appointed first assistant attorney general. He served in that position until his resignation on December 31, 1909. At that time he was designated Commissioner of Insurance and Banking, a post he held until July 1910, when he moved to Brownsville. Hawkins served as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of Texas from 1913 until 1921. He spent the last years of his life in Abilene, where he died on July 23, 1937.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Dallas Morning News, July 24, 1937. Frank W. Johnson, A History of Texas and Texans (5 vols., ed. E. C. Barker and E. W. Winkler [Chicago and New York: American Historical Society, 1914; rpt. 1916]). Who's Who in America, 1934–35.