Phebe Ann Jacobs

Phebe Ann Jacobs (July 1785 – February 28, 1850) was an American Congregationalist, laundress, and free woman. Best known for her posthumous biography Narrative of Phebe Ann Jacobs, Jacobs was born into slavery on the Beverwyck plantation in Lake Hiawatha, New Jersey.

During her life, she was enslaved by the family of the President of Dartmouth, then the President of Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. In the final years of her life, she achieved emancipation and worked in Brunswick laundering clothes for students of Bowdoin.

In 1919, the New Jersey Historical Society claimed Jacobs was significant for "her rare attainments as a Christian, the strength of her faith, and her spirit of devotion."

Life

Early life and slavery Jacobs was born a slave on the Beverwyck plantation in Lake Hiawatha, New Jersey, in 1785. Jacobs did not receive an education; she was instead trained to become a domestic slave. She had a sister named Peggy, who different persons presumably owned. Jacobs was 28 years old and continued to be owned by the Allens after they moved to their new home in Pittsfield, Maine.

Later years Likely due to indentured servitude, Jacobs remained with the family until the death of her owner, Maria Allen.

Shortly before 1850, Jacobs met Phebe Lord Upham, possibly because they both attended First Parish Church. A native of Kennebunkport, Upham married Bowdoin professor T. C. Upham.

Jacobs died in Brunswick, on February 28, 1850, of an unspecified heart condition. The Allens traveled over 200 miles to attend Jacobs's funeral.

In 1850, after Jacobs's death, Upham completed a pamphlet describing Jacobs's life, titled Narrative of Phebe Ann Jacobs, also called Happy Phebe. It was published in 1850 by W. & F. G. Cash in London. On September 25, 1850, the story was published in Volume VII of The Oberlin Evangelist, edited by Henry Cowles. In 1850, it was also published by the American Tract Society of New York According to Bowdoin College, the biography "documents Jacobs’ life after emancipation and emphasizes her piety and reliance on her Christian faith...[but] does not, however, document the laborious nature of being enslaved to the Wheelock family."

Circa 1850, Jacobs's biography inspired author Harriet Beecher Stowe as she wrote 1852 anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin.

In 2010, Jacobs was added to the Brunswick Women's History Walking Trail alongside American Arctic explorer Miriam MacMillan, milliner Dolly Giddings, botanist and artist Catherine Furbish, St. John's teacher Sister Pauline Langelier, restaurateur Pauline Siatras, and abolitionist author Harriet Beecher Stowe.

In 2021, Jacobs's narrative was included in Bowdoin's There Is a Woman in Every Color: Black Women in Art exhibition as part of Black history month.