Archibald Jacob

Archibald Hamilton Jacob (31 July 1829 – 28 May 1900) was a politician in the colony of New South Wales. He served nearly thirty years in the lower and upper houses of the colonial government, as both elected and appointed representative, government minister and chairman of committees. Jacob was born in Jessore, in the Bengal Presidency of British India (now in Bangladesh). He was the second surviving son of Captain Vickers Jacob (1789–1836) and his wife Anne née Watson (1796–1836). Vickers Jacob had served in the Bengal Army of the East India Company, then became a merchant and landowner in the British colony of New South Wales. At the time of Archibald's birth, Captain Jacob had returned to India and was a jute planter and indigo merchant in Bengal. Archibald Jacob was orphaned in India at the age of seven by the untimely death of both his parents. His father died in Bengal in 1836 and was buried in Calcutta, and his mother Anne died later that same year in Hobart Town, Van Diemen's Land (now Tasmania), while on her way back to Sydney with her younger children. Archibald and his younger brother Robert had been left behind in Calcutta, where they were boarders for a time at La Martiniere, a newly established Protestant private school, before sailing to England to be brought up and educated by his mother's relatives in Nottinghamshire and Cheshire. In 1851 Archibald and Robert made their way to Australia to take up family land holdings established there by Vickers Jacob in the 1820s, during the early settlement of the Hunter Valley north of Sydney. In 1853, at Raymond Terrace in that neighborhood, he married Mary Snodgrass (1830–1897), daughter of prominent local landowner and politician Colonel Kenneth Snodgrass. Jacob was member for Lower Hunter in the New South Wales Legislative Assembly from 7 March 1872 until 9 November 1880. He succeeded Ezekiel Baker as Secretary for Mines in the Robertson Ministry in November 1877, retiring with his colleagues the following month, following the election that year. He then represented Gloucester from 27 November 1880 until 23 November 1882. Jacob was nominated to the New South Wales Legislative Council on 9 October 1883, and was Chairman of Committees of that body. He was a member of the Council until his death. Archibald Jacob died in Ashfield, Sydney on 28 May 1900. He was survived by his wife Mary and five sons.