Gabriel Jacobs

Gabriel Jacobs (born ) was the progenitor of the Jacobs family of free African Americans originating in Northampton County, Virginia. Several of his descendants migrated south in the mid-1700s, primarily to southeastern North Carolina.

Background

Beginning in 1662, by law, children received social status from their mother without consideration of the father. In this period, the intermingling of races was neither uncommon nor lawfully forbidden amongst indentured servants, slaves, and free people– African, Native American, or European descent. while on the other extreme lighter descendants became part of the "white" community.

Biography Jacobs is documented to be of Angolan origin. They were listed again in 1677, along with Fred Tucker, Daniel Webb, and Isbell Webb. John Custis was the founder of the Custis family in Virginia, and the great-grandfather of Daniel Parke Custis, first husband of Martha Dandridge Washington.

Early in the 1670s, John Custis built a three-story brick mansion named Arlington on the south bank of Old Plantation Creek in southwestern Northampton County. Gabriel Jacobs lived on Custis's 550-acre plantation until about 1700. John Custis's will, proven in 1696, split up Gabriel's family. Custis gave Gabriel to his wife Tabitha for four years to work on their "slope", which he had owned since at least 1682. Tabitha Custis was also given Gabriel Jacobs's daughter Jenny. Bab and Gabriel's son Daniel, along with 11 other slaves, were bequeathed to Custis' grandson John Custis (1678-1749), who inherited the plantation.

Gabriel's position and experience on the sloop, or even if he lived to be free, are unknown.

Descendants Many descendants of Gabriel Jacobs moved to Northeastern North Carolina after the death of his son Daniel Jacobs, a free man of color. Daniel's sister Jenny remained enslaved by the Custis family, and later had children. A descendant of Jacobs funded the Gabriel Jacobs EPOCH Initiative internship at Old Dominion University, for research into descendants of slaves of the Custis family. He was a Northampton County taxable in his household from 1720 to 1723 and was a "negro" taxable head of a household from 1724 to 1731 with his wife Elizabeth and children.

Daniel's children are considered to be Isaac, Abigail, Frances and Elizabeth. Her sister Frances married Daniel Webb, grandson of Daniel Webb "Negro" (estate of John Custis of Arlington) and Ann Williams, a white indentured servant. Some of Abigail's children were counted as "white" on tax rolls beginning in 1762. Some children of her brother Isaac were also counted as "white". Thus, some of the families became multiracial nearly three hundred years ago. In the 1700s, some families began to identify as white, some as black. Abigail's children were Primus, John, Matthew, Esther, Abigail, and Zachariah. He was listed as a "Black" taxable in Brunswick County, North Carolina in 1772 and granted land on Buckhead Swamp in the same county in 1784.

Zachariah is the father of Peter, William, Josiah, and Ezekiah. All four sons served North Carolina during the American Revolution. They were among over 400 freeborn African-Americans from North Carolina who served as Patriots. He was head of a Brunswick County, North Carolina household of 4 "other free" in 1800, and 8 in 1810.

Ezekiah recorded a discharge certificate from his service as a soldier in the North Carolina Line on February 18, 1788, in New Hanover County. 675 acres of Brunswick County land was recorded in his name between 1800 and 1820.

There is currently no formal evidence of the descendants of Ezekiah. One theory suggests he married Prudence and is the father of Noah, born September 13, 1803, in Brunswick County, in the portion that became part of Columbus County upon its formation in 1808. However, there are DNA tests that do not confirm this theory. Additionally, there is no consensus among genealogists, but this is not the most commonly accepted parentage theory.

Generation 5 Noah Jacobs, possible son of Ezekiah, (1803 - <1880) a cooper and cotton farmer, was born in Brunswick County, North Carolina. He married Keziah Long, daughter of Gabriel Long about 1835. He was listed as "white" in all existing census records during his lifetime. Noah and Keziah had 13 children: Caroline, Anna Jane, John Wilson, Gabriel K, Mary Elizabeth, George Washington, Noah Edwards, Dorcas Adaline, Susan E, Rebecca Ellen, Benjamin Franklin, Prudence L., and Daniel Pinkney. All of his progeny have been considered "white."

Noah's wife Keziah received a gift of 100 acres of land from her father Gabriel in 1835, likely a wedding present. Noah petitioned for a land grant of 100 acres in Columbus County "adjoining his own line" and that of Washington Long in 1846. This land was next to that his wife Keziah had received in 1835 from her father and near Gabriel Long's property.

On June 5, 1846, he sold 10 acres on Town Creek "adjoining McKay now Berry, on the second Branch below Meadow House Branch" to Jane Cumbo and her heirs of Brunswick County, North Carolina. This 10 acres was likely inherited from his father Ezekiah. Cumbo was a fairly common name among enslaved people in Virginia and subsequently among Cumbo freedmen beginning as early as the mid-1600s. Jane was likely descended from the early Virginia Cumbo family and may have been a relative of Noah Jacobs.

As part of the "free Negro Code," an 1840 North Carolina statute provided 'that if any free negro, mulatto, or free person of color, shall wear or carry about his or her person, or keep in his or her house, any shot gun, musket, rifle, pistol, sword, dagger or bowie-knife, unless he or she shall have obtained a license therefor from the Court of Pleas and Quarter Sessions of his or her county...." In other words, any "other free" persons needed to obtain a license to own a gun. Documents from Columbus County records contain Noah Jacobs' attestations to the need for other Jacobs men living near him to own a firearm for hunting purposes. These Jacobs were possibly "black" relatives with the same common ancestor – Gabriel Jacobs of colonial Virginia. In 20 years, the American Civil War would begin, and the final split between the white and black sides of the family would be complete.