Loading
WJ![]()
author
Wilbur R. Jacobs
Wilbur R. Jacobs (1918-1998) was an American historian, with a special interest in Native American, Western, and Environmental history.
Born in Chicago, Illinois on June 30, 1918,...view moreWilbur R. Jacobs (1918-1998) was an American historian, with a special interest in Native American, Western, and Environmental history.
Born in Chicago, Illinois on June 30, 1918, Jacobs moved west at a young age and settled in the Los Angeles area. He started college at Pasadena City College, then earned his B.A. (1940) and M.A. (1942) in History at the University of California, Los Angeles. After military service during World War II, Jacobs started doctoral study at Johns Hopkins University, but decided to return to UCLA to pursue Western Frontier history under the direction of Lewis Knott Koontz. He finished his doctorate in 1947 and then taught Western Civilization at Stanford University for two years, before accepting a call to the History program at the University of California, Santa Barbara (known at that time as the University of California, Santa Barbara College). At the University of California, Santa Barbara, Jacobs served as a founding member of the History Department and also served as Department Chair from 1961-1964.
Jacobs revised his doctoral dissertation, which had won a prize from the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association, and published it as Diplomacy and the Indian Gifts: Anglo-French Rivalry among the Ohio and Northwest Frontiers, 1748-1763 (1950). Jacobs’ interest in frontier history continued with his edited book The Appalachian Indian Frontier: The Edmond Atkin Report and Plan of 1755 (1954). In 1960 he published the edited collection of Letters of Francis Parkman in two volumes, which was a runner-up for the Pulitzer Prize in History. A number of other books and articles followed over the next two decades. After his retirement in 1988, Jacobs conducted research at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California and published two further books in 1994 and 1996.
On June 15, 1998, Professor Jacobs was killed in a car accident in Pasadena, two weeks before his 80th birthday.view less