Howard-Wabash County IN Archives Biographies.....Jacobs, Robert 1870 - 
************************************************
Copyright.  All rights reserved.
http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm
http://www.usgwarchives.net/in/infiles.htm
************************************************

File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Joy Fisher sdgenweb@yahoo.com April 5, 2006, 11:57 pm

Author: Jackson Morrow

CAPTAIN ROBERT JACOBS.

   The most elaborate history is perforce a merciless abridgement, the historian
being obliged to select his facts and materials from manifold details and to
marshal them in concise and logical order. This applies to specific as well as
generic history, and in the former category is included the interesting and
important department of biography. In every life of honor and usefulness there
is no dearth of interesting situations and incidents, and yet in summing up such
a career the writer must needs touch only on the more salient facts, giving the
keynote of the character and eliminating all that is superfluous to the
continuity of the narrative. The subject of this sketch has led an active and
eminently useful life, not entirely void of the exciting, but the more prominent
facts have been so identified with the useful and practical that it is to them
almost entirely that the writer refers in the following lines.

   Robert L. Jacobs is a native of Indiana, born in the county of Wabash on
December 25th of the year 1870, being the son of Thomas and Margaret (Polk)
Jacobs. At the early age of ten years he was deprived of a mother's tender care
and guidance, but the father kept the family together until the children were
able to make their own way in the world and spared no efforts or pains in
looking after his interests and instilling into his youthful mind proper
conceptions of duty and the responsibilities which awaited him when he should
grow up and take his place in the busy scenes of life. After remaining at home
and attending the public schools at intervals until his fourteenth year he
accepted the position of clerk and delivery boy in a grocery store, the duties
of which he discharged until becoming a salesman for a clothing firm in the city
of Wabash, his experience in these capacities having a practical value in making
him familiar with business and enabling him the better to lay the foundation for
his future course of action. Leaving Wabash in 1890 he came to Kokomo and
entered the employ of Strickland & Company, and after some time with the firm
accepted a position with E. Perkins, still later selling goods successively for
Shonfield & Stone and Isaac Myers. his experience with the above parties
covering a period of twelve years, at the expiration of which time he severed
his connection with the mercantile business to enter the employ of the Knerr
Board and Paper Company, with which he became identified in 1902.

   Mr. Jacobs entered the above establishment as assistant superintendent. which
responsible position he still holds and the duties of which he has discharged
with credit to himself and to the satisfaction of the firm, whose full
confidence he enjoys and by whom he is held in the highest personal esteem and
regard.

   When the Grant Fencibles. or Company L, Indiana National Guard, was organized
in 1892, Mr. Jacobs entered its ranks as a private, but in due time rose to the
position of sergeant, later passed by successive promotions to second and first
lieutenant and in 1896 to the rank of captain, which position he was holding at
the breaking out of the Spanish-American war. Shortly after the beginning of the
struggle the company was called upon for active duty, being mustered into
service on May 10, 1898, as Company L, of the One Hundred and Sixty-eighth
Indiana Volunteers, and later joined the main command at Chickamauga, Tennessee,
where it was stationed until transferred to Knoxville, that state, the following
August, from which place it was ordered home the ensuing September. The war
having closed the company was mustered out on November 4th of the same year, its
experience, which covered a period lacking six days of six months, being in
every respect satisfactory and reflecting credit upon its commanding officer,
who during the time indicated brought the company to a high standard of
discipline and won recognition as one of the best and most soldierly captains in
the service.

   Captain Jacobs has great liking for the military and a natural aptitude for
the manifold duties connected with the army life. On the mother's side he came
of a family of soldiers, his grandfather Polk, who was a cousin of ex-President
James K. Polk, having performed military service, while two of his uncles served
with distinction in the Civil war. Robert Polk as colonel and Samuel as captain,
the latter being killed in battle.

   The captain is a prominent member of the Pythian fraternity, in which he has
passed all the chairs and in the Uniform Rank of which he is captain of Company
No. 6, besides serving at different times as assistant inspector general of the
Indiana Brigade,Uniform Rank, on the staff of General Jones. He stands high in
the order both locally and throughout the state, and has added greatly to the
growth and influence of the company over which he has command, the latter being
recognized as one of the best drilled and thoroughly disciplined organizations
of the kind in Indiana. He is also identified with Lodge No. 190, Benevolent and
Protective Order, of Elks, in which he takes an active interest and the growth
of which in public favor is due as much to his efforts as to those of any other
member of the society.

   Captain Jacobs is a Republican in politics, but by no means aggressive.
Nevertheless he is familiar with the leading questions upon which men and
parties divide and has the courage of his convictions in these and other matters
of interest and importance.

   In the year 1892 Captain Jacobs entered the marriage relation with Maude
Reed, of Wabash, Indiana, an intelligent and estimable young lady of that city
and a graduate of its high school, the union resulting in the birth of two
children—Fennell, who died at the early age of six months, and Elinor Elizabeth.

   Captain Jacobs is essentially a self-made man, and as such ranks with the
most enterprising and progressive of his contemporaries.

   Thrown upon his own resources at the age of fourteen, without help or
influence from any source, he has steadily pursued the honorable course which in
clue time brought social recognition and the responsible place he now fills in
the industrial world. By a life consistent in motive and action and because of
his many fine personal qualities he has earned the sincere regard of all AVIIO
know him, and in his home, which is the center of a large social circle, there
is always in evidence a spirit of generous hospitality, old and young* alike
being at all times welcome.


Additional Comments:
From:

HISTORY OF HOWARD COUNTY INDIANA
BY
JACKSON MORROW, B. A.
ILLUSTRATED
VOL. II
B. F. BOWEN & COMPANY
INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA

(circa 1909)


File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/in/howard/bios/jacobs159bs.txt

This file has been created by a form at http://www.poppet.org/infiles/

File size: 7.2 Kb