Jacob I. Cohen, Jr.

Who is Jacob I. Cohen, Jr.?

Jacob I. Cohen Jr. was a banker, railroad executive, and civic leader who helped win for Jews the right to hold public office in Maryland.

Sources differ on some details of his early life. The 1912 History of the Jews in America says his father was "Jacob J. Cohen", who emigrated from Rhenish Prussia to the American colonies in 1773, fought in the Revolutionary War, and died in 1808. The Maryland State Archives gives his father's name as "Israel I. Cohen", who died in 1803. The 1906 Jewish Encyclopedia says that the elder Jacob was the older brother of Israel, who followed him from Oberdorf, near Nördlingen, Bavaria, to Richmond in 1787, and there became the father of Jacob I. Cohen Jr.

All agree that after the elder Cohen died, his widow, Judith Solomon Cohen, moved her six surviving children, all sons, from Richmond to Baltimore, where the family came to have sizeable influence. Jacob and at least one of his brothers served with distinction in the defense of the city during the War of 1812.

In 1812, Cohen and his brothers founded Cohen's Lottery and Exchange Office, which became one of Baltimore's foremost lottery brokers, with branches in several other East Coast cities.