Jacob I. Cohen Jr.

Jacob I. Cohen Jr. (born September 30, 1789, in Richmond, Virginia; died April 6, 1869, in Baltimore, Maryland) was an American banker, railroad executive, and civic leader in Baltimore who helped win the right for Jews to hold public office in Maryland. Biography 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 1901 Jewish Encyclopedia says that the Jacob J. Cohen was the older brother of Israel, who followed him from Oberdorf, near Nördlingen, Bavaria, to Richmond in 1787. There Israel married and became the father of Jacob I. Cohen Jr. All agree that after the elder Cohen died, his widow, Judith Solomon Cohen (1766-1837), moved her six surviving children, all sons, from Richmond to Baltimore. There the sons grew to establish a family with sizeable economic and political 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. Cohen brought each of his five brothers into business with him. Brothers Philip J. Cohen and Mendes I. Cohen (1796–1879) were in charge of their Norfolk office, where they were arrested on charges of selling National Lottery tickets (for the District of Columbia) in Virginia after the state had passed a law against sale of such out-of-state lottery tickets. The two men were convicted but the case eventually reached the U.S Supreme Court. In Cohens v. Virginia, the Court affirmed its jurisdiction over such state cases.