Hans Jacobs

JACOBS, THORSON, ISAACSON

Posted By: Peter Gausmann (email)
Date: 1/31/2010 at 07:32:43

HANS JACOBS

Hans Jacobs, whose time and energy are devoted to the operation of his excellent farm on section 3, Linden township, Winnebago county, was born in Norway, November 25, 1864. His parents, Jacob and Anna (Thorson) Jorgenson, came with their family to the United States in 1868 and after a year spent in Howard county, Iowa, located in Forest township, Winnebago county. The father purchased eighty acres of land and for about thirty-three years made his home upon that farm, his death occurring in 1901, when he was seventy-three years old. The mother survived for four years and died at the advanced age of eighty-one years.

Hans Jacobs was less than four years of age when brought to America and received his education in the district schools of Forest township, in the Forest City high school, in the Iowa State Normal College at Cedar Falls and in the State College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts at Ames. When only eighteen years old he began teaching and during the next decade alternately taught and attended school and also during the summers did some farm work. At length he took charge of a farm belonging to his brother, Thomas Jacobs, and operated that place for two years. He then returned to the home place and gave his undivided time and attention to the cultivation of that farm. Following his father's death he removed to his present home farm on section 3, Linden township, which he had purchased the previous year. He gives a great deal of thought to the management of his work and is very efficient in his methods. He is progressive but at the same time has had sufficient experience in actual farm work to enable him to guard against taking up too quickly with untried and perhaps impractical innovations. He owns stock in the Farmers Co-operative Creamery and the Farmers Elevator Company of Thompson. It was on Mr. Jacobs' farm that a large meteorite fell about four o'clock in the afternoon one day many years ago with an explosion heard fifteen miles away.

Mr. Jacobs was married in 1897 to Miss Lizzie Isaacson, of Forest township, a daughter of Nels Isaacson, who removed to Winnebago county from Chicago about 1870. To Mr. and Mrs. Jacobs have been born six children, of whom four survive, namely: Mabel A., who is a graduate of the Thompson high school and is teaching; and James N., Leonard H. and Emma G., all at home.

Mr. Jacobs supports the republican party at the polls, for four years was a member of the township board of trustees and for a number of years has been treasurer of the school board. A public office has been to him a public trust and his duties have been discharged with an eye single to the good of the community. He is recognized as a successful farmer, a public-spirited citizen and a man of the highest character. The rules which have governed his life are found in the teachings of the United Lutheran church, to which he and his family belong.

Source: History of Winnebago County and Hancock County, Iowa: A Record of Settlement, Organization, Progress and Achievement, Vol. II. Pioneer Publishing Company (Chicago), 1917. pp. 158-159.