The Jacobs Banking Dynasty of Tucson
Values Codes I – H – E – L – P
Brothers Lionel Jacobs (1840’s-1922) and Barron Jacobs (1846-1936), with their nephews Abraham Maurice (known as “A. M.”) Franklin (1857-1932) and Selim Franklin (1859-1927), and their brother-in-law Marcus Katz (1820-1899), built the Arizona Territory’s strongest bank in Tucson and were elected to eight city, county, and state offices between 1871 and 1885.
Barron Jacobs
Lionel and Barron Jacobs’ father convinced his sons in 1867 to travel from California to Arizona with a wagonload of food to launch a grocery business in the newly established territorial capital of Tucson.
The venture proved successful, but the brothers were constrained by a chronic shortage of coins and currency in the rugged and crime-prone territory.
They had to extend credit to many of their customers to keep the business in operation.
The brothers found that the debtors were happy to pay their bills with an additional interest charge, and the brothers began earning a greater profit on the interest payments than on the groceries.
The Jacobs brothers soon engaged in local politics. Lionel Jacobs was appointed in 1871 to the board of supervisors of Pima County (which contains Tucson) and the other supervisors elected him board chairman.
He won a seat in the Arizona territorial legislature in 1873 and the legislators chose him as Territorial Treasurer.
In 1876, Lionel and Barron’s nephews, A. M. Franklin and Selim Franklin, joined them in Tucson.
A. M. worked in the retail store and won a seat on the Pima County board of supervisors in 1877.
In 1878, Barron won election to the Tucson city council.
The brothers financed a move by A. M. in 1879 to open a new retail store in Safford, northeast of Tucson, in Graham County, and A. M. was twice elected to that county’s board of supervisors.
Selim Franklin became an attorney in Tucson and won a seat in the Arizona territorial legislature in 1885.
Lionel and Barron’s brother-in-law, Marcus Katz, also joined the Tucson mercantile business and won a seat on the Tucson city council in 1885.
In all, eight members of the extended Jacobs family came to Arizona to work in the brothers’ business and five of them won elective office.
In 1879, Lionel and Barron formed the Pima County Bank, the first in Tucson.
Most of the bank’s transactions were like those the brothers had been performing in their retail trade and, in the bank’s first year of operation, they prospered.
The brothers closed their grocery business in 1880.
In the next decade, the brothers reorganized and restructured their bank, renaming it the Arizona National Bank, which was so solid it came to be called Arizona’s “Bank of England.”
Lionel and Barron Jacobs sold their interest in the Arizona National Bank in 1913 and retired from banking, recognized as Tucson’s preeminent bankers.
Source
- Mark Rutzik, Breaking New Ground: The Untold Story of Early America’s Jewish Electoral Pioneers – 1788 to 1920, 2025.
Mark Rutzick is the curator of this Jacobs Family exhibit.
