author
Orange Jacobs
1827–1914
A frontier lawyer, judge, newspaper publisher, and public official, he helped shape early Washington Territory and later wrote down his own memories of life in the American West. His memoir offers a firsthand view of migration, politics, and settlement in the nineteenth century.
1 Audiobook
Memoirs of Orange Jacobs
by Orange Jacobs
About the author
Born in New York in 1827 and raised partly in Michigan, he studied at Albion College and the University of Michigan before being admitted to the bar in the early 1850s. He practiced law in Michigan and then moved west to Washington Territory, where he became deeply involved in public life.
Over the years he served in a remarkable range of roles, including territorial legislator, chief justice of the Washington territorial supreme court, delegate to the U.S. Congress, mayor of Seattle, newspaper publisher, and later a superior court judge in King County. That long career placed him close to many of the key political and civic developments of the Pacific Northwest in the nineteenth century.
He is also remembered as the author of Memoirs of Orange Jacobs, published in 1908, a personal account of frontier life and his experiences in the West. He died in Seattle in 1914, leaving behind both a public record and a vivid autobiographical portrait of his era.