Washington Michael Jacobs

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Washington Michael Jacobs (August 29, 1828 — May 23, 1899) was born in Balford, South Carolina to Ann Baldwin Jacobs and Cornelius Jacobs in the United States of America. Both of his parents were natives of South Carolina and his mother was a native of Charleston.

In 1849 he moved to San Francisco, California traveling aboard ship by way of Cape Horn. He spent about six years, from 1850 to 1856, in California and western Arizona. At Ajo, Arizona he worked as an assayer in the mines near Yuma and Arizona City. He then moved to Victoria, British Columbia, Canada and later made his way to South America, living in Chile, Bolivia, and Peru, where he was engaged in mining also.

In 1874 he married Miss Rosa Mulet, the accomplished French-Chilean daughter of a merchant in Valparaiso, Chile. They moved to Lima, Peru where he began interests in mines and politics and, published a semi-weekly newspaper, El Tumbes, and the Imprenta Americana. For a time he served as the American Vice-consul at Lima, Peru. One of their sons, Benjamin R. Jacobs, was born in the consulate on March 15, 1876.

At the outbreak of war between Bolivia and the joint forces of Chile, and Peru in 1879, the War of the Pacific, the Jacobs family returned to San Francisco and shortly afterward, moved to Tucson, Arizona. After arriving in the Old Pueblo in March of 1880, he established the Jacobs Assay Office and continued in the assay business until he died on May 23, 1899 at Los Angeles, California.

During the time the Jacobs lived in Tucson he owned and operated several mines in Sonora, Mexico as well as in Arizona. Some were silver mines.

In 1883, Mr. Jacobs was one of the parties involved in the famous San Ricardo mine case, which finally was decided by the state Supreme Court in 1886 and reported in Volume II of Arizona Supreme Court case records. [1]

In 1884 in partnership with Mr. Tom Childs Sr., Mr. Jacobs located the Ajo Mines and established a permanent camp where they began working and mining copper, and processing the ore from the mine. A small ore milling plant was established about 1897 that was operated by Mr. Jacobs and his sons. The Ajo mines were sold by Childs and Jacobs to A. J. Shotwell, a promoter, in the fall of 1898. In 1912, those holdings were sold to a firm that would became a part of the Phelps Dodge Corporation.

Washington Michael Jacobs was duly elected as Justice of the Peace of the Tucson Precinct of Pima County in 1887 and started his term of office on January 1, 1888 for a period of two years.