James Boyd Hawkins, early Texas planter, was born in Franklin County, North Carolina, on December 27, 1813, the son of John D. Hawkins.
He married Ariella Alston in 1834, and they had eight children.
Hawkins was educated in schools in Raleigh, North Carolina, studied at West Point for two years, and served as a colonel in the militia in Warren County, North Carolina.
He took slaves from Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, to Lower Caney Creek, in Matagorda County, about 1845 or 1846 and raised cotton and sugar cane.
He built an oven brick kiln and one of the largest sugar mills in Texas. In the mid-1850s he built the Hawkins Lake House.
The house received a historic medallion from the Texas State Historic Survey in 1962.
The United States Census of 1860 shows Hawkins with 101 slaves and property valued at more than $161,000.