Jacobs

near Waynesboro, Franklin County, Pa., the son
of Henry and Anna Maria (Miller) Jacobs. His
grandfather, Martin Jacob, emigrated in 1753
from Preursdorf in Alsace, settling first in Fred-
erick County, Mi, but later pushing into the
wilderness of Washington County, Pa. He gave
a portion of his land for a church and a school,
the locality thence gaining the name of Jacob's
Church. Michael Jacobs' mother died in 1810
and his father, a farmer, in 1822, leaving the boy
to be reared by relatives. He entered the prep-
aratory department of Jefferson College at Can-
onsburg, Pa., in 1823 and graduated second in
the class of 1828. For a short time he taught in
a boarding school at Belair, Mi, but in April
1829 he went to Gettysburg, Pa., to assist his
elder brother David at the Gettysburg Gymna-
sium. In his effort to conduct the Gymnasium
single-handed, David Jacobs (1805-1830), a man
of saintly life and brilliant promise, had sacri-
ficed his health and was already dying. In 1832,
when the school was reorganized as Pennsyl-
vania (now Gettysburg) College, Michael was
elected professor of mathematics and natural sci-
ences and held this post until his retirement, be-
cause of failing health, in 1866. In 1832, having
read theology privately, he was licensed by the
West Pennsylvania Synod. In his doctrinal opin-
ions he was a whole-hearted conservative; his
only recorded outburst of indignation occurred
on his reading S. S. Sdimucker's Definite Plat-
form. On May 3, 1833, he married Julianna M.
Eyster of Harr isburg. Although modest and even
diffident, he exercised a strong influence over his
pupils and eventually over a good part of the
General Synod of the Lutheran Church. His
scientific attainments, considering his isolation
and straitened circumstances, were respectable.
He constructed most of the physical and chem-
ical apparatus that he used, won something more
than local celebrity as a meteorologist, and suc-
ceeded, about 1845, in preserving fruit by can-
ning. This process, although it had been used in
France for some twenty years, was then un-
known in rural Pennsylvania. His Notes on the
Rebel Invasion of Maryland and Pennsylvania
and the Battle of Gettysburg (Philadelphia,
1864; 7th ei, Gettysburg, 1909) was based on
careful personal observation. He served three
terms as president of the West Pennsylvania
Synod and three terms as treasurer. After his
retirement he continued to live in Gettysburg,
enjoying his books and his garden until a few
days before his death,

[There is a memoir by Jacobs' son, Henry Eyster
Jacobs, in J. G. Morris, Fifty Years in the Luth. Min-
(1878). See also E. S. Breidenbattgh, Pa. Coll
1832-8* (1882), with portrait; Biog. and Hist.

Jacobs

Cat. Washington and Jefferson Coll., 1802-1902 (1902) ;
and Adam Stump and Henry Anstadt, Hist, of the
Evangelical Luth. Synod of West Pa. (1925). For
Jacobs' brother see M. L. Stoever, memoir in Evan-
gelical Rev., vol. VII (1855-56), and W. B. Sprague,
Annals Am. Pulpit, vol. IX, pt. i (1869).] G.H.G.

JACOBS, WILLIAM PLUMER (Mar. 15,
i842-Sept. 19, 1917), Presbyterian clergyman,
was born in York County, S. C, the son of the
Rev. Ferdinand and Mary Elizabeth (Redbrook)
Jacobs. His father was the founder of the York-
ville Presbyterian Church and conducted girls'
schools in Yorkville (York), S. C., Charleston,
S. C., Fairview, Ala., and Laurensville (Lau-
rens), S. C. At the age of sixteen William en-
tered Charleston College. He was a serious stu-
dent and decided that year to give his life to
Christian work. In 1859 he was appointed to re-
port the proceedings of the South Carolina Sen-
ate for the Carolinian and in 1860 he reported
the session at which the ordinance of secession
was passed. At nineteen he entered the Columbia
Theological Seminary. One of his professors,
James Henly Thornwell [q.vJ], so impressed
Jacobs that later he named an orphanage for him.
Resuming his journalistic activities, he reported
at Augusta, Ga., 1861, the proceedings of the
General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in
the United States, the first Assembly held by the
seceding Southern Presbyterians.

After finishing his course at Columbia he as-
sumed the pastorate of a Presbyterian church of
forty-seven members in Clinton, S. C., at that
time a small crossroads village. Here, in 1864,
he began a work that lasted half a century. The
state was emerging from the war and entering
the Reconstruction era, and he believed that a
small church, properly guided, could be a great
pow'er in the social welfare of the community.
He saw the need and dreamed of a home for
orphans; educational facilities were lacking and
he planned a high-school association, which grew
into a college, and a library association for adult
education. In order to further these schemes he
established in 1866 a paper called True Witness,
which was succeeded by Farm and Garden, and
this by Our Monthly (still issued by the Thorn-
well Orphanage Press), By 1875 his dream of
an orphanage was in part realized by the opening
of the first cottage, housing eight orphans. Dur-
ing the forty-three years of his presidency of
Thornwell, as the orphanage was called, it grew
to fourteen homes, housing more than three hun-
dred children. The members of his church stood
behind him and with their aid Clinton Academy,
which developed into Clinton College in 1880,
was established. This institution later became
the property of the presbyteries of the State and

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