Jacobs was born on March 15, 1842, in York County, South Carolina, the son of the Rev. Ferdinand and Mary Elizabeth (Redbrook) Jacobs. His father was the founder of the Yorkville Presbyterian Church and conducted girls' schools in Yorkville (York), South Carolina, Charleston, South Carolina, Fairview, Alabama, and Laurensville (Laurens), South Carolina.
At the age of sixteen William entered Charleston College. He was a serious student and decided that year to give his life to Christian work. At nineteen he entered the Columbia Theological Seminary.
In 1859 Jacobs was appointed to report the proceedings of the South Carolina Senate for the Carolinian and in 1860 he reported the session at which the ordinance of secession was passed. Resuming his journalistic activities, Jacobs reported at Augusta, Georgia, 1861, the proceedings of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States, the first Assembly held by the seceding Southern Presbyterians. After finishing his course at Columbia he assumed the pastorate of a Presbyterian church of forty-seven members in Clinton, South Carolina, at that time a small crossroads village. Here, in 1864, he began a work that lasted half a century. The state was emerging from the war and entering the Reconstruction era, and he believed that a small church, properly guided, could be a great power in the social welfare of the community. He saw the need and dreamed of a home for orphans; educational facilities were lacking and he planned a high-school association, which grew into a college, and a library association for adult education. In order to further these schemes he established in 1866 a paper called True Witness, which was succeeded by Farm and Garden, and this by Our Monthly (still issued by the Thorn-well Orphanage Press). By 1875 his dream of an orphanage was in part realized by the opening of the first cottage, housing eight orphans. During the forty-three years of his presidency of Thornwell, as the orphanage was called, it grew to fourteen homes, housing more than three hundred children. The members of his church stood behind him and with their aid Clinton Academy, which developed into Clinton College in 1880, was established. This institution later became the property of the presbyteries of the state and the name was changed to Presbyterian College of South Carolina, with Dr. Jacobs still chairman of the trustees. In the last years of his life his frailness became pronounced, and when in 1911 the Synod of South Carolina unanimously elected him moderator, he declined to serve, because of his deafness and poor eyesight. He resigned the pastorate of the First Presbyterian Church but continued to take an active part in the affairs of the Orphanage until his death, which occured on September 19, 1917.
Jacobs married, April 20, 1865, Mary Jane Dillard of Laurens County, and to them five children were born.
