John Jacob

Brigadier-General John Jacob CB (11 January 1812 – 6 December 1858) was an officer of the British East India Company who served in colonial India for the major portion of his career. He is known for the cavalry regiment called 36th Jacob's Horse, and for founding the town of Jacobabad, in Sind province of British India (now Sindh in modern day Pakistan), where he planned and supervised the transformation of thousands of acres of desert into arable land over the course of twenty years. The scale of progress and prosperity his works brought to the region can be appreciated by comparing those regions' relative prosperity compared to areas which were not under his administrative jurisdiction. Early life He was born at Woolavington, in the county of Somerset, England, where his father the Reverend Stephen Long Jacob was incumbent. His mother was Susanna, daughter of the Reverend James Bond of Ashford, Kent, England. He was schooled by his father until he obtained his cadetship to Addiscombe Military Seminary. A number of the young cadets there who were his contemporaries, included such famous officers as Eldred Pottinger, Robert Cornelis Napier, Henry Marion Durand, Vincent Eyre and others. He was commissioned into the Bombay Artillery (Bombay Army) on his 16th birthday, and subsequently sailed for India in January 1828, never to set foot in England again. Afghan War After seven years employed with his regiment, he was then employed as subordinate to the collector of Gujarat. In 1838 he was ordered to Sind with the Bombay column, to join the army of the Indus at the outbreak of the First Anglo-Afghan War.