San
Joaquin County
Biographies
GEORGE W. JACOBS
Numbered among the promoters of the
substantial upbuilding and progress of California is George W. Jacobs, one of
the leading bridge building contractors of the state. He was born and reared at Hartland, Michigan,
his birth having occurred March 12, 1863.
His education was obtained in the public schools of Hartland and at the
age of seventeen he left home for Wisconsin and found work in the lumber camps
of that state; then he went to Minnesota and engaged in well boring in La
Crescent; then he went to St. Paul, Minnesota, and there did his first bridge
building work. His first work was on the
construction of the Seventh Street Bridge from St. Paul to West St. Paul, a
fine piece of engineering work, the bridge being 2,785 feet long and 205 feet
high. Following this, in 1888, he came
to the Pacific Coast and first located at Spokane Falls, Washington, and was
employed in the construction of the Washington Water Power Works. He worked on the first bridge over Monroe
Street; then he received the contract for building two bridges over the
Knootsac River at Seattle. Mr. Jacobs
removed to San Francisco in 1894, where he was employed by the San Francisco
Bridge Company, who had the contract for building the foundation for the Ferry
Building at the foot of Market Street; he also had charge, as foreman, of the
construction of the first cylinder wharf in San Francisco. During the period of nine years of his
connection with construction work for the San Francisco Bridge Company he had
the opportunity of overseeing extensive operations in bridge building and other
large construction work. He then joined
the forces of the Southern Pacific Railroad Company and was put in charge of
the bridge construction in the Los Angeles division and remained with this
company for four years, when he located in Stockton, where he entered the
employ of the Clark & Henery Construction Company. He built steel tanks for the Benicia Water
Company, also tanks at Antioch and Burlingame, and a drawbridge over the
Sacramento River at Kechival Landing. He then organized his own company, the George
W. Jacobs Company, and among his most outstanding work has been the building of
bulkheads. He has, in fact, constructed a
majority of the bulkheads along the Stockton Channel. Recently Mr. Jacobs built a bulkhead for the
Western Pacific Railroad Company. After
the earthquake, Mr. Jacobs spent ten months in San Francisco engaged in
wrecking work.
The marriage of Mr. Jacobs united
him with Miss Kathryn Manion, a native of Grass
Valley, California, whose father, a pioneer of California, came from Ireland by
way of Panama in 1852. Fraternally Mr.
Jacobs is identified with the Knights of Pythias, the Knights of Khorassan, the
Woodmen of the World, and the Moose of Stockton.
Transcribed by V. Gerald Iaquinta.
Source: Tinkham, George
H., History of San Joaquin County, California , Page
1561. Los Angeles, Calif.: Historic
Record Co., 1923.
© 2012 V. Gerald Iaquinta.
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