Davis Elkins

Davis Elkins (January 24, 1876 – January 5, 1959) was a United States Senator from West Virginia. Born in Washington, D.C., he attended the Lawrenceville School, Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts and Harvard University. During the Spanish-American War he enlisted as a private in the First West Virginia Volunteer Infantry, becoming assistant adjutant general in 1898.

Elkins was an industrialist with interests in railroads, banking, utilities, and coal mining; he was appointed as a Republican to the U.S. Senate to fill the vacancy caused by the death of his father, Stephen B. Elkins, and served from January 9 to January 31, 1911, when a successor was elected. During the First World War he served in the United States Army in France, 1917-1918. He was then elected to the U.S. Senate and served from March 4, 1919, to March 4, 1925; he was not a candidate for renomination in 1924. While in the Senate he was chairman of the Committee on Expenditures in the Department of Commerce (Sixty-sixth Congress).

From 1936 to 1956 he was owner of the Washington and Old Dominion Railroad Company. Davis Elkins died in Richmond, Virginia in 1959; interment was in Maplewood Cemetery, Elkins, West Virginia.

Davis Elkins was a son of Stephen Benton Elkins and a grandson of Henry Gassaway Davis, both U.S. Senators from West Virginia. His sister Katherine Hallie "Kitty" Elkins (Jan. 14, 1886 - Sept. 3, 1936) was engaged for some time to Prince Luigi Amedeo, Duke of the Abruzzi (1873 - 1933), a cousin of the king of Italy.