James Francis was born in South Leigh, near Witney, Oxfordshire, in England, United Kingdom.

His first job was in Stonington, Connecticut, as an assistant to the railway engineer George Washington Whistler Jr., working on the New York and New Haven Railroad.

[1] As manager and chief engineer, Francis was responsible for the construction of the Northern Canal and Moody Street Feeder.

He was wounded in the hand at the Battle of Antietam as a captain, and finished the war in July 1865 as lieutenant colonel.

[8] In 1850, Francis ordered the construction of the Great Gate over the Pawtucket Canal to protect the downtown mills from any devastating floods.

[citation needed] But less than two years later, in 1852, the gates saved the city of Lowell from the devastating floods of 1852, and again in 1936, 1938, 2006, and 2007 by preventing the Merrimack River from entering the canal system.

However, arson damage to the wooden gate in the 1970s, and the difficult method of dropping it (by breaking a large chain link) prompted the city to use a more modern steel-beam bulkhead in its place in 2006.

[9] In 1886, Francis teamed up with two other civil engineers; Eliot C. Clarke and Clemens Herschel to study and publish their findings in the "Prevention of Floods in the Valley of Stony Brook" which laid out a flood prevention system for the city of Boston.

[10] Francis stayed active on all levels of involvement in the city of Lowell, and served as an alderman from 1862 to 1864.

In 1874, Francis served on the American Society of Civil Engineers committee to investigate the cause of the breach of the Mill River dam in Massachusetts.

“The remains of the dam indicate defects of workmanship of the grossest character.”[13] Francis originated scientific methods of testing hydraulic machinery, and was a founding member of the American Society of Civil Engineers and its president in 1880.

[9][16]  Although the report was completed by January 1890, it was immediately suppressed and not released to other ASCE members or the public until mid-1891, two years after the 1889 flood.

A detailed discussion of the South Fork investigation, the participating engineers, and the science behind the 1889 flood was published in 2018.

With the incorporation of the Francis turbine into almost every hydroelectric dam built since 1900, it is responsible for generating almost one fifth of all the world's electricity: