Brigadier General Joshua West Jacobs, a career United States Cavalry officer from 1861 to 1904, was born in Danville, Kentucky on June 24, 1843. Danville is a small town in central Kentucky about 35 miles southwest of Lexington. It was then and remains today a "college town," being the home of Centre College of Kentucky and the Kentucky School for the Deaf. During West's boyhood, the town also was the home of the Danville Theological Seminary and the Law School of Centre College.

West's father, John Adamson Jacobs, was the fourth Superintendent of the Kentucky School for the Deaf in that city. Serving first as its principal for ten years, and then as its superintendent for another 34, and following on the heels of three principals of very short tenure, he is considered its founder. Its main building, Jacobs Hall, is named for him. The Kentucky School for the Deaf was the first such school west of the Allegheny mountains, and the second in the United States. Jacobs had trained under the distinguished deaf educator, Dr. Thomas Gallaudet of Hartford, Connecticut, for whom Gallaudet College is named.

West's mother, Susan Walker Fry Powell Jacobs, was the daughter of Major Robert Powell, an officer in the Third Virginia Continental Line in the American Revolution, who fought at Harlem Heights, White Plains, Trenton, Princeton, Brandywine, Germantown, and Monmouth. Powell was a first cousin of James Madison, and his wife, Ann West Powell, was a second cousin of George Washington. The two Powell grandparents were early Kentucky pioneers.

Joshua West Jacobs' father was a strong supporter of the Union cause. As Kentucky was a neutral state, neither West nor his brothers were obligated to fight on either side. But West had a strong liking for the military. He asked his father's permission to enlist on the Union side, which his father refused, feeling that at even age 18 and as a freshman at Centre College, West was simply "too young". But West would not be deterred. He put the word out around Danville that if his father would not let him enlist in the Union cause, then he would run away from home and join the Confederates. Danville being a small town, the word got back quickly to the father, who finally granted permission.

On November 10, 1861, he enlisted as a private in the Union Army in the 4th Kentucky Volunteers. He fought in many engagements in the western theatre. In a letter to his sister, Ann Frances Jacobs Cheek from Pittsburg Landing, near Shiloh, Mississippi he wrote:


April 15th 1862
In camp at Pittsburg Landing

Dear Sister,

I am very well at present. We have had a very hard time for the last week or so, marching so as to be in time for the battle, but we were to (sic) late. We landed here tuesday (sic) morning and they had about stop (sic) fighting at 4 (o'clock) Monday evening. We marched 20 miles one day and started at 4 o'clock next morning and marched hard all that day and at night they would not let us pitch our tents for we had to start at 12 o'clock that night. So I layed (sic) down on the ground and took a very good nap, although it was raining very hard. Well, at 12 o'clock, we started again and marched all night and all next day (through the rain and mud up to our knees) and at night we went on board of the Planet and went about 24 miles up the Tennessee River. Next morning we landed to go into battle as I thought, but we went about one mile from the river and camped where we have been ever since.

I will not try to describe the battleground, for I cannot but I went over a portion of some of it and may tell you about it someday.

But I forgot to tell you that our Brigade are no longer soldiers but bridge burners and Negro thieves.

Last Saturday night we were ordered to by ready to march as soon as possible when we were ready we marched down to the river got on the Tecumseh went up river about 25 miles when we landed and went about 8 miles into Miss. And burnt two bridges and tore up about 740 feet of trussed work and captured 2 prisoners and 4 Negroes without a loss of a man and came very near to capturing a train. The rebel pickets burned one of the bridges themselves thinking we wanted to cross: we could see them on the other side. Our cavalry had a slight fight with them.

I was very glad to receive the things you sent me and still more to have received the cake. My books are about worn out and we left our wagons behind the night we started and have been sleeping on the ground ever since without tents or blankets and I need some clean clothes very much for I have had on these for a very long time.

Please send baking soda. It makes my bread taste a lot better.


He was captured twice, but exchanged. One of those exchanges was for Lieutenant Hobson Powell, his first cousin and a young lawyer from Yazoo, Mississippi. The following is the text of a letter from A. E. Worthington, a sister of Hobson Powell, and a grandchild of West Jacob's grandmother, Ann West Powell:


Yazoo County, near Benton, Mississippi
December

Dear Uncle Jacobs:

We have just heard through Hobson's letter of the painful intelligence of your son West being a prisoner at Charleston. Brother George's wife has a brother James W. Burness, a prisoner at Johnson's Island. He was captured at Lookout Mountain Tennessee while a lieutenant in Captain Maybee's Company of the 30th Mississippi Regiment.

He and West being officers, and you being a man of influence in Kentucky, I imagine you will not have much trouble or difficulty in having them exchanged. It would be pleasant and agreeable to us all to know that such an exchange could be affected, and I feel assured that you will do all you can to bring about such an exchange. I would like to hear from you all; if you can write me do so; but love to all the family.

Your affectionate niece,

A [nn?] E [liza West?] Worthington

Hobson was subsequently killed in Franklin Tennessee, in the Battle of Stone Mountain.

At the end of the war, West had achieved the rank of major.

West wished to remain in the military. His father, however, did not favor a military career. In a letter to West on July 25, 1865, he wrote, in part:


I don't urge upon you, my son, to enter the regular service. If you think that further service in the army would be unfavorable to your moral and religious character, by no means continue in it. I know the military life is unfavorable to morals and religion, but it is not necessarily so. There have been and are now some eminently good and pious men in the army. … If you chose to look around in the South for any opportunity of getting into business, you must eschew as you would the very father of evil himself all speculation, risk, and debt. It is true that sometimes they lead to success, but in nine cases out of ten, to utter ruin. Whatever you do, begin in a small and safe way, depend wholly on industry, perseverance and economy, and especially upon God; and you are certain of reasonable success and independence. This is all a wise man should want and aim at. Riches are not desirable, but independence is.

West remained in the Army, but at the lower rank of lieutenant. West was assigned to the cavalry on the western frontier, and fought in the Indian Wars.

It was about 1875 that West Jacobs acquired a Chas. Fasoldt pocket chronometer. The serial number of 534 suggests that it was one of the last watches made by Mr. Fasoldt in his Albany, NY shop, and incorporating his patented spring détente double escape mechanism. The gold case, numbered 1867, bears the mark of "AAJ&Co.," and is probably of English origin. It bears the fascinating - and puzzling - engraving that reads:

Involuntary Contribution
of the Sub. Dept., U.S.A.
J. W. Jacobs,
U.S. Army

What's intriguing is that the Army rewards good performance with a medal. For some reason ("Involuntary Contribution", whatever that is), Uncle West got a gold watch from the "Sub. Dept. USA" (whatever that is).

West Jacobs was in the first detachment that came on the dead Custer and his 7th U.S. Cavalry after the Battle of Little Big Horn in 1876. It is entirely possible that West was carrying his new watch when he arrived on the scene of Custer's massacre.

On March 1, 1886, he married Grace Chute. The couple had three sons: Charles William, Colonel West Chute, and Robert Young Jacobs.

With the conclusion of the Indian Wars, West was assigned to manage military contracts in Atlanta, Georgia. Now a captain, it was there that he supervised the construction of Fort McPherson, on what was then the outskirts of Atlanta. On June 5, 1891, he received a complimentary letter of thanks from Rufus Bullock, President of the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce. Bullock wrote:


The announcement of this morning that you … (will be reassigned from Atlanta) … will be received by our people generally with sincere regret.

While some of our contractors who have Government contracts under your supervision have felt aggrieved because you held your duty to the Government paramount, the general public estimation has been of approbation of the great work you have accomplished here. And it is not too much to say that no officer stationed here has ever been more highly esteemed than your good self.

West concluded his Army career with service in Cuba during the Spanish American War. While there, he apparently contracted malaria or yellow fever. He retired from the service on June 11, 1904. The lingering effects of the disease probably triggered his death on October 13, 1905.

He is buried at Bellevue Cemetery in Danville, Kentucky, with a handsome tombstone bearing the crossed swords of the United States Cavalry.

On West Jacobs' death, the watch was passed to a niece, Mary Bell Cheek Thomas of Danville. West was only six years old when his own mother died and Mary Cheek Thomas found herself in a similar situation when her father, Rev. Samuel Best Cheek, passed away. As that point in his life, West was a bachelor officer in the Army, and took a personal interest in his niece's welfare, paying her college expenses.

Mary Cheek Thomas subsequently passed the watch to her niece, Martha Robertson Cheek Rudd of Lexington, Kentucky. She in turn passed it to Logan McK. Cheek. Having an unusual movement, he took it for repair and cleaning to one of the few watchmakers able to repair it in the US. It is apparently quite rare. The inscription on it is still not fully understood. (LMC)


Note on Ft. McPherson, Georgia:

The installation occupies nearly 500 acres in southeast Atlanta, between the downtown area and Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.

The history of Fort McPherson dates back to 1885, when the U.S. Army acquired land some four miles south of downtown Atlanta. The installation was named in honor of Union Major General James McPherson, who was killed in action during the Battle of Atlanta on July 22, 1864. Captain Joshua West Jacobs, U.S. Army, designed Fort McPherson. Construction began in November 1886. By 1889 the first barracks were finished, and the first troops, the Fourth Artillery Regiment, moved on site. Work on the facility was completed later that year. (New Georgia Encyclopedia)

Ft. McPherson was established in 1885 near Atlanta, Georgia, to garrison an artillery regiment. It consists of approximately 504 acres adjoining the southwest city limits of Atlanta, Georgia. The general site was selected by General Winfield Scott Hancock, Commanding General of the Department of East; the specific site plan was designed by Captain Joshua West Jacobs, Constructing Quartermaster. The installation is rectangular in shape. At the center is the parade ground. Officer's quarters are on the north of the parade ground while to the south, lie the barracks. At the eastern end of the parade ground is the Headquarters building.

The majority of buildings located on the main post were constructed between 1889 and 1900. They are of brick and represent a panoply of architectural styles popular in the Victorian Era. One of the most imposing buildings is the Commanding Officer's Quarters (Building 10), a Queen Anne-style building with ornamental terra cotta panels, decorative brickwork, and massive chimney. Other quarters feature Italianate bracketed cornices. The history of construction at Ft. McPherson mirrors national Army construction during the 1890s. Some of the earliest buildings completed at the installation were designed by civilian architects. However, during the 1890s, the Quartermaster Department tried to standardize building plans, in order to control costs. The barracks buildings and the Post Headquarters were examples of some of these early standardized plans. Those buildings constructed during the first decade of the twentieth century were standardized plans, built according to using Colonial Revival detailing.

During the Spanish-American War, Ft. McPherson served as a general hospital, a prisoner-of-war camp, and an Army recruit training depot. Early in the twentieth century, the installation became home to the 17th Infantry, which was subsequently deployed for several years to Texas to fight Pancho Villa, leaving only a caretaker staff at Ft McPherson. The 17th Infantry returned to its home base just prior to the entry of the United States into World War I. (US Army Corps of Engineers)


JOSHUA WEST JACOBS
Biosketch from The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography,
volume 16 (New York: James T. White & Co., 1918), page 338
JACOBS, Joshua West, soldier, was born at Danville, Ky., June 24, 1843, son of John Adamson and Susan Walker Fry (Powell) Jacobs, and grandson of Joshua and Mary (Adamson) Jacobs. His maternal grandfather was Maj. Robert Powell, a soldier of the revolutionary war, and a brother (sic) of Ambrose Powell, a surveyor, for whom the Powell valley and river in Virginia were named. His father, the first teacher of the deaf west of the Alleghany mountains, founded (sic) the Kentucky School for the Deaf, and for forty four years was principal of that institution. The son was a sophomore at Centre College in 1861, when he enlisted in the federal army as a private in the 4th regiment, Kentucky volunteer infantry, with which he served throughout the Civil War, and was commissioned a major. After the war, he was commissioned a second lieutenant, USA, served ten years in Indian campaigns, and as a first lieutenant of the 7th Infantry was the first white man on the Custer battlefield after the massacre. In 1882, he was appointed captain in the quartermaster's department, and later became assistant quartermaster general, with rank of colonel, and was stationed at Governor's Island (New York). In 1898, he accompanied the 5th Army Corps to Cuba as chief quartermaster. In 1904, he was retired with the rank of brigadier general, USA. Six feet and two inches in height, straight and lithe as an Indian, he was regarded as a noble looking man. Hunting and fishing were his favorite pursuits, his trophies included scores of buffalo, Rocky mountain sheep, deer and antelope. He married at Thomasville, Georgia, March 1, 1886 to Grace, daughter of Richard Chute, a capitalist, of Minneapolis, Minn. She survives him, with three children, West, first lieutenant coast artillery, now instructor at West Point; Robert Young, an agriculturalist; and Charles Wilson Jacobs, student. Gen. Jacobs died at Los Gatos, Cal. Oct. 13, 1905.

JOSHUA W. JACOBS
Biosketch from Who Was Who in America, a component volume of Who's Who in American History, volume 1, 1897-1942. (Chicago: A. N. Marquis Co, 1943).

JACOBS, Joshua W. soldier, born in Kentucky June 24, 1843. Entered military services as private, Co. K, and sergeant major, 4th Ky. Volunteer infantry, November 10, 1861 - September 25, 1862. Commissioned 1st lieutenant, 4th Kentucky Volunteer infantry September 25, 1862, captain, September 1, 1863, major, 6th Kentucky volunteers, July 1, 1865. Honorably mustered out August 17, 1865.

Appt'd. 2d lieutenant, 18th US Infantry June 28, 1866, transferred to 36th Infantry regiment September 21, 1866; captain and assistant quartermaster March 8, 1882, major, quartermasters December 31, 1894, lieutenant colonel and deputy quartermaster general, USA November 1, 1900; colonel and assistant quartermaster general; brigadier general and retired after forty years service (deceased) (Who Was Who)