The Jacobs Brothers
From left to right: Lionel Jacobs, Barron Jacobs, the Jacobs Block in Tucson
Lionel and Barron Jacobs were early merchants and founders of the first bank in the city of Tucson.
On July 10, 1840 Lionel Jacobs was born in Manchester, England to a Polish father, Mark Israel Jacobs, and an English mother, Hannah Solomon. The elder Jacobs moved the family to Baltimore in the early 1840s after his clothing store was robbed and he became bankrupt. Lionel’s brother Barron was born there in 1847, the second of what would grow to be twelve children. The Jacobs family did not set down roots on the East Coast, however, and by 1851 they had resettled in San Diego, lured by the promise of wealth in the California gold rush. There, Mark changed professions and ran a general store and a news depot. They moved again six years later, to San Bernardino, in order to reunite with their daughter Leah and her husband. Mark Jacobs and Company proved to be profitable in California and in 1861 Lionel joined the family business, followed by Barron the next year.
Although the Jacobs boys had different characters - Lionel was more gregarious while Barron was more reserved - their differences did not prevent them from getting along. Once, while they were still boys, they successfully stowed away on a wagon train to get to Tucson, their future home, although upon arrival they were immediately sent back to their parents in San Bernardino. In the spring of 1867, they set off for Tucson again, this time with parental approval: their father had heard the news that Tucson would receive territorial capital status from Prescott, and sensing a new prospect for his business, he dispatched the brothers to Arizona. Their arduous journey took over two months, and upon arrival in Tucson, Lionel and Barron were met with the surprise that Tucson was still wildly underdeveloped and with a population of about 2,000. Not lacking in determination, the two brothers opened up their modest store, M.I. Jacobs and Company. In a week’s time all of their merchandise had been bought up.
Realizing that Tucson was a profitable place for merchants, the Jacobs brothers embellished their little store and bought more goods to sell. This new stock, as well as three consecutive shipments, all sold out in rapid fashion. A fourth shipment of goods was lost in the Colorado River, however, which sent their father Mark into bankruptcy and forced the Tucson branch of M.I. Jacobs and Company to close after less than a year of business. While Lionel and Barron occupied themselves with picking up whatever work they could find in Tucson, their father was able to pay off his debt, and after saving up enough money, he sent his sons another shipment of general goods. This freight arrived safely on January 12, 1870.. By the middle of the 1870s, the brothers were dealing not only in general merchandise but in quality clothing, pharmaceutical goods, and home furnishings as well. With the help of their father, the Jacobs brothers were also able to establish a financial exchange in which they converted gold, sent to them by their father, into paper money at a profitable rate before it was then sent to California.
While Lionel and Barron saw their business prosper during the 1870s, their family life was in turmoil. Their sister Julia passed away in 1871, followed by their mother in 1872. Their desolate father proceeded to marry a sixteen-year-old girl which ruined his relationship with Lionel and caused M.I. Jacobs and Company to dissolve in 1875. Business operations did not stagnate, however: following the dissolution of the family enterprise, the two brothers, along with their associate, Leopold Wolf, founded L.M. Jacobs and Company.
On Christmas Day, 1878, Lionel and Barron founded the Pima County Bank. Opening Tucson’s first bank was a logical decision for the brothers, seeing as they had already been engaging in short-term loans with locals. Banking soon overtook commerce as the Jacobs’ primary interest. In 1880, the same year they opened a branch of their bank in Tombstone, they closed their store, and by 1883 they had ceased merchandising entirely. In 1903, both brothers helped found the Arizona Banking Association. Upon their retirement from banking in 1913, the Jacobs brothers had accumulated more than thirty years of experience in banking and had amassed great wealth.
Outside of business, Lionel and Barron were active in the political and social lives of territorial Arizona as well. Barron was once a territorial treasurer, while Lionel served on the Tucson City Council as well as on the Seventh Territorial Legislature. Regarding their social lives, the Jacobs brothers were not lacking in energy. Like many other early Tucsonans, they liberally partook in gambling, drinking, and frequenting brothels in the Wedge and Maiden Lane, which constituted Tucson’s red light district in the mid- to late 19th century. In 1873, both brothers contributed to the founding of the Tucson Literary Society and were members of the Arizona Social Club. From 1880 to 1881, Lionel was president of B’nai Israel, an early attempt to form a congregation which was never officially incorporated and only held informal services.
Barron, like many other white pioneers on the frontier, had a Mexican sweetheart with whom he had a child., Both his father and Lionel found this unacceptable, however, given the intense scrutiny that interracial marriages were subject to at the time, so his father arranged a marriage between Barron, aged 29, and Henrietta “Yetta” Katz, a sixteen year-old girl from New York. Although all contact with his first lover was cut off, Barron continued to support the child that they had together. He and Yetta had only one child, their daughter Hilda, who went on to marry General Charles B. Drake. Yetta established herself well in adverse conditions, becoming a well-liked socialite, an important member of the Woman’s Universal Benevolent Association of Tucson, and an important factor in L.M. Jacobs and Company, where she worked as a bookkeeper. Unlike his brother, Lionel remained a bachelor until the age of 69, when he finally married a woman named Bertha Frank on June 15, 1909.
These two pioneering brothers, who did so much to develop the early Arizona Territory, both died outside of the land where they made their homes and their fortunes. Lionel passed away on February 7, 1922 in San Francisco while Barron passed away in 1936 in Washington DC.
Cholent and Chorizo, by Abraham Chanin
Jewish Settlers in the Arizona Territory, by Blaine Lamb
Photo credits: Bloom Southwest Jewish Archives