Congregational clergyman, social worker, b. Ottawa, Waukesha County. He graduated from the Univ. of Wisconsin (B.A., 1893), and did graduate work at Wisconsin (1893-1896) and at Mansfield College, Oxford, England (1896-1897). He was ordained in the Congregational ministry and held pastorates in various Milwaukee churches until 1902 when he and his wife, MARY BELLE [AUSTIN] JACOBS, b. East Troy, and an 1893 graduate of the Univ. of Wisconsin, opened the Univ. Settlement House in Milwaukee. There Univ. of Wisconsin graduate students in sociology and economics studied social and industrial problems. Jacobs and his wife are recognized as the founders of organized social work in Wisconsin. Jacobs concentrated primarily on problems of child labor, public health and recreation, juvenile probation, and industrial employment, while his wife helped inaugurate home nursing work in Milwaukee, established one of the first branch libraries, and also a self-supporting workingman's camp. Jacobs helped organize the Wisconsin Anti-Tuberculosis Association in 1908, was its president (1921-1930), and from 1937 until his death was a member of its senior council. Wis. Mag. Hist., 16; Crusader, 41 (1), pp. 14-15; Milwaukee Journal, May 14, 1929, Nov. 2, 1948; Madison Wis. State Journal, Nov. 1, 1948.

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[Source: Dictionary of Wisconsin biography]