Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Jacob, Edward
JACOB, EDWARD (1710?–1788), antiquary and naturalist, born about 1710, was son of Edward Jacob, surgeon, alderman, and chamberlain of Canterbury, by his wife Jane, daughter of Strangford Violl, vicar of Upminster. He practised as a surgeon at Faversham, Kent, and was several times mayor of the borough. He purchased the estate of Sextries in Nackington, near Canterbury. He died at Faversham on 26 Nov. 1788, in his seventy-eighth year (Gent. Mag. vol. lviii. pt. ii. p. 1127). Jacob married, first, on 4 Sept. 1739, Margaret, daughter of John Rigden of Canterbury, by whom he had no surviving issue; and, secondly, Mary, only daughter of Stephen Long of Sandwich, Kent, by whom he had eleven children; she died on 7 March 1803, in her eighty-first year (ib. vol. lxxiii. pt. i. p. 290; Archæologia Cantiana, xiv. 384).
Jacob was author of: 1. ‘The History of the Town and Port of Faversham,’ 8vo, London, 1774; and 2. ‘Plantæ Favershamienses. A Catalogue of … Plants growing … about Faversham … With an Appendix, exhibiting a short view of the Fossil bodies of the adjacent Island of Shepey,’ 8vo, London, 1777, to which his portrait, engraved by Charles Hall, is prefixed. In 1754 he communicated to the Royal Society ‘An Account of several Bones of an Elephant found at Leysdown, in the Island of Sheppey’ (Phil. Trans. vol. xlviii. pt. ii. pp. 626–7). In 1770 he edited, with a preface, the tragedy, ‘Arden of Faversham.’ Jacob was elected F.S.A. on 5 June 1755, and in 1780 contributed to the ‘Archæologia’ some ‘Observations on the Roman Earthen Ware taken from the Pan-Pudding Rock’ at Whitstable, Kent, in which he took occasion to refute the views held by Governor Thomas Pownall, F.S.A. He also assisted William Boys in ‘A Collection of the minute … Shells … discovered near Sandwich,’ 4to [1784]. Some of his letters to A. C. Ducarel are printed in Nichols's ‘Illustrations of Literature’ (vols. iv. vi.); his correspondence with E. M. da Costa, extending from 1748 to 1776, is in Addit. MS. 28538, ff. 260–77.
John Jacob (1765–1840), third son of the above, born on 27 Dec. 1765, was in 1803 residing at Roath Court, Glamorganshire. In 1815 he removed to Guernsey, where he employed his leisure in collecting materials for ‘Annals of some of the British Norman Isles constituting the Bailiwick of Guernsey,’ of which part i., comprising the Casket Lighthouses, Alderney, Sark, Herm, and Jethou, with part of Guernsey, was printed in a large octavo volume at Paris in 1830. Part ii., announced for December 1831, never appeared. John Jacob died on 21 Feb. 1840, in Guernsey, in his seventy-fifth year (Gent. Mag. new ser. xiv. 663–4). He married Anna Maria, daughter of George Le Grand, surgeon, of Canterbury, and had five sons and four daughters. Sir George Le Grand Jacob [q. v.] was his fifth son.
[Nichols's Lit. Anecd. vii. 194, 601; Jacob and Glascott's Hist. and Geneal. Narrative of the Families of Jacob, privately printed, 1875, pp. 15, 23.]