Dr. Jacob Schieffelin

Dr. Jacob Schieffelin was born in New York City, April 20, 1793. His father, Jacob Schieffelin, was born in Philadelphia, August 24, 1757, and his grandfather in Germany, February 4, 1732. The subject of this sketch was reared to manhood in his native city. When but seventeen years of age he was an ensign in the militia, at twenty a captain and at twenty-one a colonel. After a thorough preparatory education, he began the study of medicine in 1810 with Dr. Onderdonk, afterward Protestant Episcopal bishop of Pennsylvania, and attended three courses of lectures at Columbia College, from which institution he graduated in 1822. He at once became a partner with his brother, H. H. Schieffelin, in the wholesale drug house of H. H. Schieffelin & Company, of New York. During the next five years he spent his summers in New York and his winters in Savannah, Charleston, Mobile, New Orleans and Havana, acquiring in the meantime a fair knowledge of the Spanish language. He was in command of the militia regiment in New York City that received Lafayette in 1824, and at the reception which followed he was presented to that distinguished visitor. In 1824 he went to Mexico and opened a branch store. While there he made the acquaintance of Santa Anna, then a lieutenant in the Mexican cavalry, but afterwards the celebrated commander-in-chief of the Mexican army. In 1828, having previously purchased large bodies of land in Tioga and Lycoming counties, Pennsylvania, he removed to Tioga county and located on Hill’s creek, in Charleston township. In 1830 he erected a saw-mill and the following year a large frame dwelling. He later disposed of his land and in 1845 removed to Tioga borough, where he passed the remaining years of his life, dying December 27, 1880, in the eighty-eighth year of his age. Dr. Schieffelin married Elizabeth Black and reared the following named children: Clinton, who died in Los Angeles, California; Alfred, a resident of Charleston township; Elizabeth, a resident of Tioga; Laura, who married the late O. B. Lowell, of Tioga, and died in Elmira, September 18, 1866; Cornelia, who lives in Los Angeles, California; Edward G., a resident of Wellsboro and superintendent of the Stokesdale tannery; Jacob, a retired merchant of Tioga, and Mrs. Hannah Lyon, who lives in Illinois. Mrs. Schieffelin died in 1881, aged eighty-four years.