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The West Virginia Encyclopedia
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The West Virginia Encyclopedia
Congressman and Confederate General Albert Gallatin Jenkins (November 10, 1830-May 21, 1864) was born at Green Bottom, Cabell County. He was educated at Marshall Academy (now Marshall University), Jefferson College, and Harvard Law School. Jenkins practiced law in Western Virginia and served in the U.S. Congress from 1857 to 1861.
At the start of the Civil War he enlisted recruits for a Virginia unit called the Border Rangers and was elected their captain. In July 1861, at Scary Creek in Putnam County, Jenkins’s leadership was instrumental in defeating the Union force. In August he formed the 8th Virginia Cavalry (CSA) and became its colonel. In November Jenkins with other cavalry units staged a surprise raid on a Union camp at Guyandotte.
In early 1862, Jenkins was elected to the First Confederate Congress. In August he was appointed brigadier general. He went on to command a battalion of cavalry at the Battle of Gettysburg. Jenkins was recognized as a fearless cavalry raider.
Jenkins died of wounds he received at Cloyd’s Mountain. He rests in the Confederate plot in Spring Hill Cemetery in Huntington. Jenkins’s Green Bottom plantation house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978. Jenkins’s home and plantation were listed as Endangered Properties by the Preservation Alliance of West Virginia in 2012.
Read the National Register of Historic Places nomination for the Albert Gallatin Jenkins House.
Written by Jack L. Dickinson
Geiger, Joe Jr. Civil War in Cabell County. Charleston: Pictorial Histories Publishing Company, 1991.
Dickinson, Jack L. Jenkins of Greenbottom. Charleston: Pictorial Histories Publishing Company, 1988.
McManus, Howard Rollins. The Battle of Cloyds Mountain: The Virginia & Tennessee Railroad Raid. Lynchburg: H. E. Howard, 1989.
Hechler, Ken. Newspaper series. Huntington Herald-Advertiser. 1961.