David P. Jenkins (Colonel)

David P. Jenkins (August 26, 1823 – March 30, 1915), was an American attorney, soldier, businessman and philanthropist who homesteaded Spokane, Washington.

Jenkins was born on a farm near Mount Pleasant, Ohio, to orthodox Quaker parents. He was educated at the local Quaker seminary and in the high school in Mount Pleasant. He studied law in Cincinnati, Ohio, and passed his bar exam. He moved to LaSalle, Illinois, where he established a prosperous legal practice. He was an acquaintance of Abraham Lincoln (both men were lawyers for the Illinois Circuit Courts).

During the American Civil War, Jenkins served in the Union Army under Generals Grant, Pope, Sherman and Burnside in the Western Theater. Initially, he was the major of the 1st Illinois Cavalry. Jenkins saw his first combat action in two engagements near Lexington, Missouri, and helped negotiate the surrender of Federal forces in that vicinity to the Confederates in September, becoming a prisoner of war.

He was exchanged that November and returned to the ranks, commanding two companies of the cavalry at Bird's Point, Missouri, from December until the spring of 1862, when he was assigned command of a battalion of the 1st Illinois Cavalry in southern Missouri, where his men protected supply lines to the army of General Samuel Curtis operating in Arkansas. In mid-1863, Jenkins became the lieutenant colonel and later the colonel of the 14th Illinois Cavalry, a regiment which he helped recruit and train.

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