John Holmes Jenkins

Who was John Holmes Jenkins?

John Holmes Jenkins III was an American historian, antiquarian bookseller, publisher, and poker player.

Jenkins published his first book Recollections of Early Texas History the year he graduated from high school. He went on to become a well-known dealer in antiquarian books and documents, primarily of Texas history. Unlike many booksellers, he read much of what he bought and sold, resulting in his ten-volume Papers of the Texas Revolution. His Jenkins Publishing Company, including the Pemberton Press for trade publishing and the San Felipe Press for private publishing, produced more than 300 titles.

Jenkins was elected a fellow of the Texas State Historical Association in 1967.

In 1971, Jenkins was instrumental in helping the FBI recover an extremely valuable portfolio of original colored engravings, John James Audubon's Birds of America, stolen from Union College in Schenectady, New York. Jenkins's accounts of this experience, the purchase of the Eberstadt collection, and other lively reminiscences appear in his book Audubon and Other Capers, published in 1976.