Baron and Lionel Jacobs collection
Correspondence from A. A. Castaneda & Co. concerning a business matter related to retail stores.
Collection dates: 1868 to 1903 bulk 1874 to 1889
The collection includes cancelled checks, drafts, invoices, receipts, weigh bills, stationery letterheads (business), letters and miscellaneous items pertaining to the mercantile and banking businesses of Barron and Lionel Jacobs in Tucson and Southern Arizona.
Banking records consist of cancelled checks, notes, drafts, deposit slips, memorandum checks, and certificates of deposits from the M. I. Jacobs & Company, the L. M. Jacobs & Company Bankers, the Pima County Bank branches in Tucson and Tombstone, Cochise County Bank, and the Arizona National Bank. Mercantile records include invoices, receipts, letters, licenses, and other miscellaneous items.
Additional records include bank correspondence, newspapers and records detailing business with mining companies.
Lionel M. Jacobs (1840-1922) and Barron M. Jacobs (1846-1936) were brothers, merchants, and bankers. Their father, Mark I. Jacobs (1816-1894) was an established merchant in San Francisco who sent them to Tucson, Arizona in 1867 to open a new branch of their retail store. Initally called the M.I. Jacobs and Co., the name was changed to the L.M. Jacobs and Co. following their father's retirement in 1875.
Following their arrival to Tucson, the brothers found success in their exchange business; gold coin from San Francisco was exchanged for paper money in Tucson. By 1879 they established the Pima County Bank, the first bank in Tucson. The brothers gave up the mercantile part of the business in 1880 to concentrate on banking. They later became associated with the Cochise County Bank of Tombstone (known before 1882 as the Agency Pima County Bank) and the Arizona National Bank (first called the Santa Cruz Valley Bank).
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