Frances Wisebart Jacobs
Frances Wisebart was born in Kentucky in 1843. She trained as a teacher and while teaching in Cincinnati, OH, she met and married her brother’s business partner, Abraham Jacobs, in 1863. The couple moved to Colorado where her husband and brother had established businesses and after several disasters, one of the couple’s sons died and two of the families businesses were destroyed in fires, the family moved to Denver where Frances, described as a “frail woman with an unfailing sense of humor,” became involved in a number of charitable organizations.
Recognizing a need for a coordinated effort to raise money to combat community problems, Jacobs, Father William O'Brien, Reverend Myron Reed, Dean H. Martin Hart and another Catholic priest joined together in 1887 to create the Charity Organization Society, providing funding for 23 local charities. Jacobs would serve as secretary for the remainder of her life. The organization would become known in the 1920’s as the Community Chest and by the 1960’s would become universally known as the United Way.
In 1892, while ill, Jacobs delivered medicine to a sick child and contracted pneumonia and died. Jacobs was named one of 16 Colorado pioneers, and the only woman, memorialized in a stained glass window in the rotunda of the Colorado State Capitol. A bronze statue of Jacobs depicting her carrying her bag of medicines and soaps stands in the National Jewish Medical and Research Center (NJMRC) and, along with the NJMRC, was awarded the Denver Mayor’s Millennium Award in 2000. Jacobs was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 1994.
In an article in the Rocky Mountain News in August of 1888, Jacobs was quoted as saying, "I know that whenever women lead in good work, men will follow."
Jacobs’ niece described her this way, "Aunt Frank was that rare combination of dreamer and doer. She not only dreamed of free kindergartens and orphanages, a home for the aged and a hospital, but with good business sense brought them to reality.”
