b'Jews in the Old WestPART 2 By Alan RockmanTHE JACOBS27, unable to find suitable female companionship BROTHERS OF TUCSON and yearning for a busier life that the windswept Like Big Mike Goldwater,half plains, half mountainous small town had to Lionel and Barron Jacobs\'offer them. On one of their visits to San Francisco father was born into anthey were perusing a newspaper when they spotted impoverished Polish Jewisha new item about a growing town in Southern family. Like the Goldwaters,Arizona called Tucson whose city fathers were urging Mark Israel Jacobs was abusinesses to establish themselves there. Excited, they merchant, a clothier. But unlike the Goldwaters, hismentioned the possibilities there to their father, who sons were American-born in Baltimore, Lionel inwas equally enthusiastic about the idea of moving a 1840, Barron in 1846. They spent their adolescentcompany store to the Arizona Territory. Supported years in the southern California beach communityby their father, Lionel, and Barron "purchased the of San Diego, going to school and learning toitems needed for the trip: a team of twelve mules be beekeepers, the more introverted Barron wasfitted with harnesses and bits and a freight wagon enthusiastic about his work, but the bubblier andthat was four feet deep, five feet wide, and twenty feet engaging Lionel was not, being careless and oftenlong. The brothers packed some personal possessions stung. Both boys, urged on by their father took ain the wagon - shirts, an extra pair of boots, soap, premium interest in learning, something denied toand then loaded the wagon full of canned goods - him in the same anti-Semitic atmosphere of Czaristapproximately twelve hundred cans, each the size Poland that the Goldwater brothers had fled from.of a soup can. When they climbed into the wagon Mark Jacobs soon resettled, away from the breezy,and sat in the buckboard seat, Lionel and Barron cool beach community to the then-very small townwere dressed in business suits and hats" (Ibid., p.11), of San Bernardino, where he and a business partnerand then they were off on an over 400-mile ride ran a very successful general merchandise store andthrough rugged, at times rocky terrain towards their lodging place, attracting the new settlers heading westdestination at a time (May 1867) when the seasonal towards another bustling community by the name ofweather of California was turning from warm to hot - Los Angeles and a few still heading north to what wasin the Arizona Territory they knew little about, it was left of the gold fields. As soon as his sons reached theirturning from hot into scorching hot. Lionel Jacobstwenties, they too became involved with the business.Another unpredictable obstacle was the late spring The family also experienced the hatred of Jewsfloods which often left travel impossible for days.moving through the brush. The mules were everything firsthand when their brother-in-law Wolf CohnAveraging about six miles a day, it took two weeksand couldn\'t be lost. They were reminded of this, was gunned down in his own dry-goods store by aand the loss of two of the mules when they got caughtBarron noted, by the "vultures that circle in the air drunken bigot named Dick Cole who had clashedin one of the floods, but they kept on going until theyabove us and follow us on the trail" (Ibid., p. 17).with Cohn over a pair of boots, and then called thereached their first destination - San Diego - the very victim a "a damn Jew son of a bitch" before murderingtown they grew up in. They then undertook a 170- Covered in sweat, those business clothes changed him. They also experienced the decency and themile journey from San Diego to the Colorado River,much earlier on the trip, the brothers made their way good of the majority folks of the San Bernardinoright as temperatures skyrocketed to the 90s, reachingacross the desert, through the heat, the critters and all, community, who when learning that the JewishArizona just before June turned to July. throughout most of July. Their spirits were lifted by merchants of the town were planning to leave inthe occasional sighting of a Wells-Fargo stagecoach, masse in the wake of Cohn\'s murder, rose as one,But the most arduous journey was yet to come -fortunately not encountering the scores of rampaging expressing their support of the merchants, andanother 255 miles from Yuma to Tucson in a desertApache who crossed the Sonoran constantly to raid begging them to stay. One newspaper editor openlywhere the temperatures were well over 120 degreessettlements in both Arizona and Mexico. Then finally, wrote in his paper that "We are determined to defendand the desert denizens, the creepy crawlers out inthe adobe roofs of Tucson loomed in the distance the lives and property of all our citizens. . .we willforce. Scorpions and rattlesnakes, coyotes, horned- they had made it! But, having arrived in town, in not allow a certain class of individuals to drive outtoads, and the orange, brown, white, and black Gilaurgent need of a bath and a change of clothes, the of our community the most respectable elements inmonsters were in abundance throughout the Sonoranbrothers were not impressed at what they saw. As the community" (Stanley, Frontier Merchants, p. 7).Desert as the brothers made their way on their firstBarron would write their fatherLionel thinks Later, when the enraged brother of the murderedjourney to Arizona. The brothers were able to avoidsanitation is the town\'s chief distinction, or rather lack merchant confronted and shot Cole dead, a grandall of the creatures though they always lurked nearby,of it. He says that you, Pa, should have the fortune jury refused to indict him, stating that "rowdyismespecially the poisonous ones, but they couldn\'tof being with us so you could enjoy the smell. He is has been taught a lesson. It cannot ride roughshodavoid the ants, who along with the scorpions and thejoking, of course" (Ibid., p.27).over respectable members of society" (Ibid.). Lionelsnakes constantly assaulted the poor mules. Then Jacobs himself would write of the episode and thethere were the endless forests of cacti which couldLesser men may have become dismayed, turned community reaction that "There are those who haterip them to shreds if they weren\'t careful. Those cactiaround, and headed back to "civilized" California, but the Jew because they have been taught to hate the Jew.were the sanctuaries for the scorpions, rattlers, andnot these two brothers. Having spent three months We have learned, however, that the popular view isGila monsters. Creeping through the cacti forests, theriding through unpredictable weather, floods, heat, one of acceptance" (Ibid.). While other less Westernbrothers encountered rattlesnakes nearly every day,the critters, and all of the related dangers, they were towns discriminated against the Jews, San Bernardinoand occasionally a family of scorpions appeared inmade of much sterner stuff, and they chose to "hit did not. Hebrew schools and Synagogues were builtthe middle of the road and stopped the mules deadthe ground running," so to speak. They journeyed and openly attended, and the Mark Jacobs Companyin their tracks. Lionel and Barron drove the creaturesthrough the town and made friends with a local "prospered" (Ibid., p. 8). away by kicking sand at them from a distance.blacksmith who took in their mules, and in a very Sometimes the brothers slept just a few hours a night;bold move to be sure, they rented a store right next to But Lionel and Barron grew restless, the youngsometimes they slept in shifts when the mules werethe firm that would become their biggest competitor, men, one just 21 and the other having just turnedspooked by howling coyotes or the sound of animalsLord& Williams. They knew that Lord & Williams 18 August 2023'