DESCENDANTS of BARTHOLOMEW JACOBY by HELENE

DESCENDANTS OF BARTHOLOMEW JACOBY By HELENE. (JACOBY) EVARD 1955 MITCHELL-FLEMING PRINTING, INC. Greenfield, Ind. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The work which has gone into this book was begun years ago and has been built up by many people. As early as 1913 Professor Henry S. Jacoby, then collecting data for his "Jacoby Genealogy," infected Arthur E. Jacoby of Chicago with his genealogical enthusiasm. Pro fessor Jacoby sent Arthur a quantity of the blanks which he was using for gathering information from his own relatives; and from then until 1926 Arthur worked at getting our family statistics from all the groups who moved to Indiana, from those who later went west, and even from some of the Ohio relatives. My father, Elias J. Jacoby, and I caught this infection, also from Henry S. Jacoby, about 1918. We continued collecting the records of Ohio relatives, considerably helped by my father's brother, John, and his sister, Mrs. Elizabeth Aye. We also visited the southern branch in 1921, and later called upon the Pennsyl vania cousins, Father Francis Siegfried and Dave Heimbaugh and his nephew Lincoln. However in those years we concentrated more upon ancestral research, and sought local records in Reading, the Pine Grove region and eastern Maryland. We called in the professional help of Mrs. Steinmetz of Reading, Mr. Warren S. Ely of Doylestown, Miss Mollie Howard Ash of Elkton, and various others. But I was presently reduced to inaction by a severe illness and a slow recovery. It had been planned that I should write up our group, to be published in Henry S. Jacoby"s book. Whm I found myself un able to continue our work, and unwilling to delay professor Jacoby, I wrote him, early in 1928, to go ahead with his own publication and ignore us. This was as well, in the long run: for his book, got out in 1930, was large enough without us, and we had not at that time begun to do all the local research which would equal his careful documentation. Arthur E. Jacoby then became increasingly active in research, and after his retirement spent most of his time upon it. This involved going in person to study deeds and other local records in various county seats. He e.=ined all possible records in Mississippi, and had his brother Ralph make a full check of the Jacoby and allied deeds at Plymouth, Indiana. Arthur also went to Reading and Pottsville, and checked records in Bucks, Northampton, Lehigh, Delaware, Chester and Lancaster Counties. ( Because the only area he might not have worked 4 DESCE!l:OA:-.-TS OF BARTHOLO:l!EW JACOBY conclusively upon in Pennsyh.mia was that of Philadelphia~Mont gomery, I checked that in 1952 with the aid of Mr. George V. Massey.) Arthur made a thorough search of the eastern Maryland records, and those at Annapolis, and of Delaware. When my own personal affairs permitted, I began, in recent years, to round up the great quantity of material we had, and to attempt to bring the family accounts up-to-date. Arthur's daughters, Alice Harnish and Helen Dickes, and bis sister Mabel Jacoby, have been tireless in working out the news of the Plymouth, Indiana, group. My first cousins, especially Etta Jacoby and Daisy Jacoby, have been of great help in col lecting the data of Michael's and Jacob's descendants. J. Wilbur Jacoby copied the court house records at Marion, Ohio, and went to Bucyrus where he found much that was valuable to add to our notes of Jonathan Jacoby. Chester L. Jacoby of Norton, Kansas, filled out our informa tion on the descendants of Jacob's oldest son, Daniel Worline Jacoby. Mrs. Madge Claypool and Joseph and Rufus Jacoby added to our news of Joseph's descendants. Gainey E. Jacoby of Oregon and Hattie Jacoby of Missouri have been responsible for our nearly complete records of Elias' descendants. It is hardly practicable to name every one who has helped us. Cousin Mary Collier's grandson, Collier Stewart, has continued the information she had given us about the Mississippi group. Mrs. L Maree Powell of Nebraska, Mrs. Rose Burnett of Albuquerque, Earl B. Morrison of Oklahoma, Mrs. Hilda Lovelace of South Bend, Arthur King of San Francisco-really all the relatives have been helpful and cooperative. It may be mentioned that all the family statistics not otherwise docu mented, especially of the later generations, have been contributed by the families themselves. And it will be obvious that we have not always succeeded in bringing records up-to-date, and that the material sent us has been sometimes scant and sometimes full. Though from the beginning I was expected to be the compiler of all this, it is hard at this point to think why this was so-unless everyone else who could have written it was too busy at other matters. THE NAME JACOBY The name Jacob, according to the Britannica, was used in Egypt for an area in central Palestine as early as 1500 B. C. It was taken over by the Hebrews, and is one of the best known names in the Old Testa ment. The New Testament, however, written in Greek, used the name Iakobos, which in Latin became Jacobus. By an odd twist of language, this was translated to James, in English. Since both Greek and Latin were inflected languages, the possessive form "of James'' which ap peared in early Bibles and in scholastic writing was Jakobi or Jacoby. For centuries Latin was the language of scholarship. so that Jacobus and Jacoby were in as frequent use as James, and interchangeable with it. Even Jamestown, Virginia, was referred to in a letter written in Latin shortly after the town was settled, as Jacobopolis. During the period when western Europeans were pouring into the new colonies of America, many were by no means scholars. But, as earnest Christians, they were fanu1iar with their Bibles. The Colum bia Encyclopaedia st."ltes that "with the invention of printing in the 15th century many people learned to read who could not write. The Reformation added a strong incentive in the desire to read the Bible." Dr. Klees, in "the Pennsylvania Dutch," comments that three-quarters of the German and Swiss immigrants of 1727-1808 could sign their mimes. He quotes Benjamin Rush who wrote in 1789, "there is scarcely an instance of a German, of either sex, in Pennsylvania, that cannot read; but many of the wives and daughters of the German farmers cannot write." During this period spelling was a much more elastic matter than it is now, and even a highly educated person could, and did, sign his name in whatever spelling occurred to him at the moment. There are in stances of a man writing his name several different ways in the same document. And eastern Pennsylvania was settled by Germans, Swiss, Holland Dutch, Huguenots, English, Scotch, of diverse backgrounds and differing degrees of education. It is hardly strange that the clerks who wrote down the census and tax and land records should spell name.c; in what we regard as wild variety. Bartholomew's last name was Jacob, Jacoby, and even James in 1787, and John was taxed as Jakobi and Jacobi. Bartholomew consistently spelled his name Jaccoby, but he was 6 DESCENDA:-.TS OF BARTHOLOMEW JACOBY convinced that it was the "Dutch" for James. He was not alone in this idea. Adam Jacoby of Tulpehocken (in Berks Co.) was taxed in 1754 as Adam James. And Henry S. Jacoby was somewhat puzzled that one of his kin, Daniel Jacoby, bom in 1783, should be found in Westmore land County in 1850 as Daniel James. It should be emphasized that the surname Jacoby, by reason of its Biblical origin, is far from uncommon. A large number of people named Jacoby came to this country in the period of Palatinate immigra tion, and we know of various Jacoby families who settled in Pennsyl vania who were not related to us, to Henry S. Jacoby's group, or to each other. It might be remarked that Henry S. Jacoby's ancestors and ours, established in different counties in Pennsylvania, never heard of each other. There is no reason to doubt that people named Jacoby may still be leaving Europe and settling here. ANCESTRAL TRADITIONS When Peter James went north, in the summer of 1859, to visit his Jacoby relatives in Ohio and Indiana, we may be practically certain that he carried his father's little leather-bound Bible with him. This Bible was later owned by Peter Oark James, in whose home Peter had died. But in 1904 the house of Peter Oark James was burned in a Yazoo City fire ; the Bible was among the things the distracted household was un able to save. Dan James of Vicksburg remembered poring over the family :-ecords in this little old book when he was a child, and the many entries with the name Jacoby interested him. The writing was hard to read. No one ever thought to copy these items Bartholomew had written in his Bible. But Peter's visit quickened the family consciousness of its back ground ; and the tales that have come down to us through the house holds in which he visited, though confused, as most family traditions are, do agree to a surprising extent in their general outlines. The prevailing opinion was that the family came early to New Amsterdam (that is, of course, before 1664 when the town became New York), and soon settled on Long Island. Bartholomew moved from Long Island to New Jersey for a few years, but later, not long after settlements began in Pennsyl vania, moved into Pennsylvania ; and he lived on the banks of the Dela ware River.

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