Jacob Raphael De Cordova (6 June 1808 – 26 January 1868) was the founder of the '' Jamaica Gleaner''. He settled in Texas in 1839 and lived in Galveston. After living in Galveston, De Cordova moved to Houston, Texas where he was elected to the Texas House of Representatives to the second Texas Legislature in the year 1847.

Biography

Early Times

Jacob Raphael de Cordova was born in

Spanish Town Spanish Town ( jam, label=Jamaican Creole, Panish Tong) is the capital and the largest town in the parish of St. Catherine in the historic county of Middlesex, Jamaica. It was the Spanish and British capital of Jamaica from 1534 until 1872. Th ...

(near

Kingston Kingston may refer to: Places * List of places called Kingston, including the five most populated: ** Kingston, Jamaica ** Kingston upon Hull, England ** City of Kingston, Victoria, Australia ** Kingston, Ontario, Canada ** Kingston upon Thames, ...

Jamaica Jamaica (; ) is an island country situated in the Caribbean Sea. Spanning in area, it is the third-largest island of the Greater Antilles and the Caribbean (after Cuba and Hispaniola). Jamaica lies about south of Cuba, and west of Hispan ...

, on 6 June 1808, the youngest of three sons of Judith and Raphael de Cordova, a coffee brewer and grower, who were British Jews of Spanish descent. Since his mother died at his birth, he was raised by an aunt in England. He was well educated and became proficient in English, French, Spanish, German and Hebrew. He soon moved to

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

to join his father. In 1829, he married a young woman named Rebecca Sterling, the daughter of pioneers. In 1834, Jacob moved back to

, where he and his brother Joshua started a newspaper, '' The Gleaner'', which is still published today. In early 1836, Jacob went to

New Orleans New Orleans ( , ,New Orleans

Grand Master of the Odd Fellows. After the Battle of San Jacinto he visited the Republic of Texas to install members in the Odd Fellows lodges, the first established outside the United States.

His Texas life

He settled in Texas in 1839 and lived in Galveston and later

Houston Houston (; ) is the List of cities in Texas by population, most populous city in Texas, the Southern United States#Major cities, most populous city in the Southern United States, the List of United States cities by population, fourth-most pop ...

, where he was elected a state representative to the Second Texas Legislature in 1847. De Cordova travelled extensively through Texas, including the frontier western areas. Through scrip and direct purchase he acquired large amounts of land to sell to settlers; at one time he had in scrip or title. To attract settlers to Texas, he made speeches about Texas in New York,

and other US cities, and to the cotton-spinners association in

Manchester Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of City of Salford, Salford to ...

. His lectures were published on both sides of the Atlantic and were widely read. His land agency, which he owned with his half-brother Phineas de Cordova, became one of the largest such agencies that ever operated in the Southwest. De Cordova and two other men laid out the town of Waco in 1848-49. Town lots of sold for five dollars, and nearby farmland brought two to three dollars an acre. Cordova's map of Texas

De Cordova and

Robert Creuzbaur The name Robert is an ancient Germanic given name, from Proto-Germanic "fame" and "bright" (''Hrōþiberhtaz''). Compare Old Dutch ''Robrecht'' and Old High German ''Hrodebert'' (a compound of '' Hruod'' ( non, Hróðr) "fame, glory, honou ...

compiled the Map of the State of Texas, first published in 1849. Much subsequent Texas cartography was based on this map, which was praised by Sam Houston on the floor of the United States Senate. Books de Cordova wrote that were influential in attracting settlers included "The Texas Immigrant and Traveller's Guide Book" (1856), and "Texas, Her Resources and Her Public Men" (1858), the first attempt at an encyclopedia of Texas. Jacob and Phineas de Cordova published two early Texas newspapers, the ''Texas Herald'' (also known as ''De Cordova's Herald and Immigrant's Guide'') out of Houston and the ''Southwestern American'' out of Austin. The latter was at the solicitation of Governor Peter H. Bell and helped to pass the Compromise of 1850, which resulted in a $10 million payment to Texas for adjusted boundaries after annexation. In the 1850s de Cordova moved from Austin to Seguin, where five miles from town he built for his wife and five children a fine country home, which he called Wanderer's Retreat. In the 1860s he tried to develop a power project on the Brazos River in Bosque County for textile mills to spin Texas cotton. The

American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by state ...

brought financial reverses to de Cordova. When purchasers of his land were unable to make payments he refused to foreclose and turn people off their land; he had first encouraged them to move to Texas. When he died on 26 January 1868, he was buried in Kimball, but in 1935 his body and that of his wife were moved to the

State Cemetery of Texas The Texas State Cemetery (TSC) is a cemetery located on about just east of downtown Austin, the capital of the U.S. state of Texas. Originally the burial place of Edward Burleson, Texas Revolutionary general and vice-president of the Republic of ...

. He was survived by five children. The De Cordova Bend Reservoir, south of Fort Worth on Lake Granbury, and the

De Cordova Bend Dam The De Cordova Bend Dam is a man-made dam on the Brazos River in Hood County, Texas, United States, controlled by the Brazos River Authority. De Cordova Bend Dam forms the Lake Granbury. The dam is so named because of the clockwise almost-co ...

, was named after him. Jacob De Cordova TxHM

Bibliography

* Henry Cohen, "The Jews in Texas," ''Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society'' 4 (1896). * James M. Day, ''Jacob de Cordova: Land Merchant of Texas'' (Waco: Heritage Society of Waco, 1962). * John H. Jenkins, ''Basic Texas Books: An Annotated Bibliography of Selected Works for a Research Library'' (Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1983; reprinted 1988). * Natalie Ornish, ''Pioneer Jewish Texans'' (Dallas: Texas Heritage Press, 1989). * Malcolm H. Stern, ''First American Jewish Families: 600 Genealogies, 1654-1988'', 3rd edn (Baltimore: Ottenheimer, 1991). Vertical Files, Barker Texas History Center, University of Texas at Austin.

References

External links

*
"DE CORDOVA, JACOB RAPHAEL"
The Handbook of Texas Online. Accessed 13 July 2004. * Jacob Raphael DeCordova
"Jacob Raphael De Cordova"
Texas State Cemetery. {{DEFAULTSORT:De Cordova, Jacob Jews and Judaism in Galveston, Texas Jamaican people of Jewish descent Members of the Texas House of Representatives Jewish American state legislators in Texas American people of Jamaican descent American politicians of Jamaican descent People from Houston People from Galveston, Texas People from Spanish Town 1808 births 1868 deaths American Sephardic Jews People of Spanish-Jewish descent 19th-century American politicians Emigrants from British Jamaica to the United States Jewish Confederates