Jacob Baker was an American merchant, financier, and lawyer.
Background
He was born on December 17, 1779, on Swan Island, Kennebec County, Maine, where his parents had moved from Nantucket in order to escape the dangers incident to the Revolution. The father, Robert, died four months after the boy was born. Sarah (Folger), the mother, was a Friend, and she reared her children in that faith.
Education
Jacob, after attending school for a time at New Bedford, returned home and worked in a store.
Career
At sixteen, with $100 saved, determining to become a seaman, he shipped as a green hand on a vessel to New York. His older brother, Abraham, who had preceded him to the metropolis, induced him to give up the sea and to take a clerkship in the commission house of Isaac Hicks. The boy was industrious, shrewd, and ambitious, and while still in the employ of Hicks he acquired a part interest in a fleet of merchant vessels.
At the beginning of 1801, having accumulated $5, 000, he started a new firm, with two friends as partners. Business reverses at this time left him bankrupt, but he immediately began again, and in a few years became wealthy.
When war with Great Britain was declared (June 18, 1812), he unreservedly supported the administration. Much of his time and effort during the war were expended in raising money for the Government, which was often in desperate straits. His own fortune was wrecked, the British having captured all his ships; his claims against the Government were never fully adjusted; and to cap these disasters, he asserts, he was both discriminated against and calumniated by his Federalist colleagues, who continued to oppose the war and sought to cripple the administration. Fresh ventures again brought him some measure of success.
In 1815 he founded the Exchange Bank, in Wall St. , and though it failed in 1819 he continued to extend his operations. The business depression of 1826, however, involved him in various troubles. One of the companies of which he was a director--the Life & Fire Insurance Company - failed, and he and six others were promptly indicted for fraud. A bitter legal contest followed, which was virtually ended, November 14, 1827, by the quashing of the indictment, though a chancery suit dragged on for some months. Barker always maintained that the indictment was the result of a conspiracy on the part of the "moneyed aristocracy" and the Federalists to ruin him; and in numerous letters and articles which from time to time he published during the next thirty-seven years he gave to the world a great mass of details in support of his charge. One result of the trial was his removal from New York. Some of the securities of the bankrupt insurance company consisted of mortgages on plantations in Louisiana, and he was immediately involved in litigation in that state.
In 1834, assigning what remained of his New York estate to Fitz-Greene Halleck and two others, he moved to New Orleans, where he studied law and was admitted to the bar. Again he prospered; he became one of the leading capitalists of the South, and was president of the Bank of Commerce when Gen. Butler entered the city. He had opposed secession; but his attitude had apparently not greatly impaired his standing. He came into some prominence again as an opponent of Butler's rigorous rule and, later, of the Congressional measures of reconstruction. In 1869, ill and once more poor, he moved to Philadelphia, to reside with his son Abraham, at whose house he died.
Achievements
Politics
A Jeffersonian Democrat and one of the founders of Tammany Hall, he yet opposed, in common with the Federalist majority among the merchants of New York City, the party policy making for war with Great Britain.
Personality
One of his chief traits was pugnacity, and circumstances provided him with many opportunities for its exercise. He had an exceptional degree of fortitude; against reverses that would have crushed most men he kept the field, repeatedly making up his losses and regaining his place in the business world. He was proud of his genealogy - particularly that part of it which related him to Franklin - and proud also of his physical resemblance to the great sage. He was not averse to mentioning his own legal and oratorical abilities, or the fact that he had taken part in many historic events and had mixed with many notables. With complacency he records the statement that he had imported the first marine engine used by Robert Fulton and that for twenty years he had had in his employ (before Astor got him) no less a person than Fitz-Greene Halleck
Connections
In 1801 he married a New Bedford schoolmate, Elizabeth Hazard.