Jacob De Cordova

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Jacob Raphael De Cordova
Born
Jacob Raphael de Cordova

(1808-06-06)6 June 1808
Spanish Town, Jamaica
Died26 January 1868 (1868-01-27) (aged 59)
Texas, US
NationalityBritish
OccupationTexas House of Representatives

Jacob Raphael De Cordova (6 June 1808 – 26 January 1868) was the founder of the

Houston, Texas, where he was elected to the Texas House of Representatives to the second Texas Legislature in the year 1847.[1]

Biography

Early Times

Jacob Raphael de Cordova was born in

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

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

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 1 acre (4,000 m2) sold for five dollars, and nearby farmland brought two to three dollars an acre.

J. de Cordova's Map, State of Texas (c. 1866)

De Cordova and

State Cemetery of Texas. He was survived by five children. The De Cordova Bend Reservoir, south of Fort Worth on Lake Granbury, and the De Cordova Bend Dam
, was named after him.

State historical marker in Waco, Texas

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

  1. ^ "DE CORDOVA, JACOB RAPHAEL". Texas State Historical Association. Retrieved 13 June 2020.
  2. ^ UK Retail Price Index inflation figures are based on data from Clark, Gregory (2017). "The Annual RPI and Average Earnings for Britain, 1209 to Present (New Series)". MeasuringWorth. Retrieved 11 June 2022.
  3. Legacies of British Slavery database, University College London
    . Retrieved on 20 March 2019.
  4. . Retrieved on 20 March 2019.

External links