Biography of Oliver C. Dawkins; Union, then Ouachita Parish, Louisiana

Submitted by Mike Miller
Source: A History of Louisiana, (vol. 2), p. 237, by Henry E. Chambers.
Published by The American Historical Society, Inc., Chicago and New York, 1925. 




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Oliver C. Dawkins.  A lawyer admitted to practice in Louisiana since 1886,
Oliver C. Dawkins, for many years has been a resident of the City of Monroe,
and while an editor and publisher there for some years, has been primarily
engaged in his law practice.  It is doubtful if any other family in Louisiana
has given more prominent names to the profession of law and public life of
the state than that of Dawkins.

Oliver C. Dawkins was born in Union Parish, fourteen miles north of
Farmerville. in 1859, son of Duncan Douglas and Margaret (Brooks-Thompson)
Dawkins.  The Dawkins family is of English ancestry.  They first settled in
Maryland in Colonial days and from that colony moved out to the South and
Southwest.  Duncan Douglas Dawkins was a native of South Carolina, and coming
west he first settled in Lauderdale County, Mississippi, later removed to
Arkansas, where he married Margaret (Brooks) Thompson, his second wife, and
finally settled on a farm in Union Parish, Louisiana, where their son,
Oliver C., was born.

A nephew of Oliver C. Dawkins is Judge B. C. Dawkins, formerly judge of the
Supreme Court of Louisiana and now federal district judge of the United States
Court for the Western District of Louisiana.  An older brother of the Monroe
attorney was Judge R. B. Dawkins, who died in 1922 after a conspicuous career
as a member of the North Louisiana bar, practicing at Farmerville and who
Served as judge of the Circuit Court of Appeals of the Northern District of
Louisiana.  Another brother was the late J. M. Dawkins, who was clerk of the
court for Union Parish, with home at Farmerville, where his son,
H. H. Dawkins, is practicing law,

Oliver C. Dawkins attended common schools in Union Parish and finished his
literary education in the University of Tennessee at Knoxville.  He taught
school and read law in Union Parish, and in October, 1886, was admitted to
the bar before the Supreme Court of Louisiana.  The same year he engaged in
Practice at Farmerville, the parish seat, and from there on January 1, 1897,
moved to Monroe.  During the next nine years he gave much of his time to his
time as editor of the Monroe Evening News.  Since 1936 he has devoted himself
without outside interests or interruptions to the successful practice of the
law. He is senior member of the firm of Dawkins & Dawkins, the junior partner
being his son, Joe B. Dawkins.

Oliver C. Dawkins married Miss Jessie Thompson, of Union Parish.  Their
children are:  Bruton C., a lawyer at Alexandria;  Joe, a partner of his
father;  Lamar, in business at Detroit, Michigan;  Frank, an electrical
engineer with the New Orleans Public Service Corporation; and  Olive, wife
of L. H. Trigg, of New Orleans, and  0. C. Dawkins, Jr., a reporter on the
News-Star of Monroe, Louisiana.

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