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Watkins, William (Lampard), a Patriarch in the Box Elder Stake of Zion, is a son of William Watkins and Hannah W. Lampard, and was born in Islington, London, Middlesex, England, Feb. 7, 1827. He was baptised into the Church by Jas. Albon in May, 1841, and his ordinations to the Priesthood have been as follows: First a Teacher, then a Seventy in April, 1844, by Jos. Young, next a High Priest in March, 1863, by Lorenzo Snow, and becoming a Patriarch Nov. 7, 1896, being ordained to that office by Prest. Lorenzo Snow. The first missionary experience of Bro. Watkins was in 1844, when he went on an electioneering tour through Kentucky in the interest of Joseph Smith's candidacy for President of the United States. In 1875 he performed a special mission to England. His activity in ecclesiastical work is attested to by these facts: He has been a teacher in Sabbath school, president of an Elder's Quorum for ten years, a High Councilor in Box Elder Stake, a counselor to Pres. Rudger Clawson of the Box Elder Stake presidency from 1879 to 1899, and since 1896 has served as a Patriarch in that Stake. The record of his civil positions is as follows: City councilman and recorder of Brigham City and treasurer and selectman of Box Elder county and some minor offices. His chief occupations have been school teaching and merchandising. For a period of thirty years he worked as secretary and treasurer of what is now the Brigham City Mercantile and Manufacturing Association. Elder Watkins married Mary E. Hammond Dec. 4, 1844, and he took to wife Teah Jensine Johnson, July 13, 1867. He is father of twenty children, fifteen of whom are living, and he has eighty-four grandchildren and twenty great grand-children. In 1842 he emigrated to America, settling in Nauvoo, Illinois (where he was in 1844, at the time of the Prophet Joseph Smith's martyrdom). He came to Utah in 1852 and located in Salt Lake county, where he remained till 1861, when he went to Brigham City, Box Elder county, and has resided there ever since.
Andrew Jenson, Latter-day Saint Biographical Encyclopedia: A Compilation of Biographical Sketches of Prominent Men and Women in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 4 vols. Salt Lake City 2:62 |
Biographies 
