Biography
Watkins was born in Midway, Utah. He attended Brigham Young University (BYU) from 1903 to 1906, and New York University (NYU) from 1909 to 1910. He graduated from Columbia University Law School in 1912, and returned to Utah. There he was admitted to the bar the same year and commenced practice in Vernal, Utah.
He engaged in newspaper work in 1914 (The Voice of Sharon, which eventually became the Orem-Geneva Times, a weekly newspaper in Utah County.) In 1914 Watkins was appointed assistant county attorney of Salt Lake County. He engaged in agricultural pursuits 1919-1925 with a 600 acre (2.4 km²) ranch near Lehi.
Watkins served as district judge of the Fourth Judicial District of Utah 1928-1933, losing his position in the Roosevelt Democratic landslide in 1932. An unsuccessful candidate for the Republican nomination to the Seventy-fifth Congress in 1936, Watkins was elected as a Republican to the United States Senate in 1946, and reelected in 1952. He served from January 3, 1947, to January 3, 1959. Watkins was an active member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the most influential church in Utah. He worked as an LDS missionary in the Eastern States Mission from 1907–1910 and as President of the Sharon LDS Stake in Orem, Utah for 16 years.
Read more about this topic: Arthur Vivian Watkins
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