Dawkins family.

Family of James A. Dawkins, a Maryland legislator.

Young Parran Dawkins (1820-1883) married Althea Elizabeth Dorsey (1824-1878) in 1842. Both were from well-known families in St. Mary's and Calvert counties, Maryland. They had five children: James Alexander Dawkins (1845-1920), Mary (1849-1850), Young Parran (1856-1899), Walter Ireland (1858-1936), and Eva (1864-1917). This collection consists primarily of correspondence from this generation of the Dawins family and the children of James and Mary Dawkins.

James Dawkins lived in Baltimore, where he was a partner in a tobacco sales business. For a few years before his death he was also a police magistrate. A life-long Democrat, he was elected to the Maryland House of Delegates in 1903 and was re-elected to an unprecedented sixth term in 1913. He married twice. Following the death of his first wife, Melissa Polk Bryant (1845-1875), and their son, James (1875-1876), he married Mary Lizzie Deming (1857-1923) of Norfolk, Virginia, in 1881. She was the daughter of Edward C. and Frances Deming and had seven siblings, five of whom survived her: Joseph, Portius, Anna, Lucy, and Walter Burrell.

James and Mary had three children: Francis Althea (1884-1965), Young Parran (1887-?), and Mary Deming (1889-1967). Frances was a school teacher; she never married. Young married Betty ? (1887-1973) in 1914 and they had one son, Young Parran (1916-1988). Mary married Herbert S. Michael (1881-1967) in 1909. They had two children: Mary Francis (1914-?) and Herbert Jr. (1921-1923).

Walter Ireland Dawkins was an associate judge of the Supreme Bench, Baltimore City, 1911-1934; he never married. Eva married James Steed Edelen (1858-?) of Prince Georges County, Maryland; they had no children.