Jacob Schieffelin (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, August 24, 1757 – New York City, April 16, 1835) was an American loyalist, merchant, landowner and philanthropist.
From 1743 on, Johan Jacob Scheuffelin (1712 – 1750) sold many properties, fields, vineyards, and land in Weilheim an der Teck to prepare his and his sons emigration to America.
In 1760, the family was transferred to Montreal, Canada, by the British Army,[1] where Jacob's father and three of his brothers died in 1769.
[2] Jacob Schieffelin married Hannah Lawrence (1758 – 1838), a poet from a respected Manhattan Quaker family, on August 13, 1780.
He volunteered for the British Army when a new military unit was formed to fight against the American colonists who had invaded Canada.
On September 25, 1775, he had his first mission during the American Revolutionary War, when the colonists under the command of Ethan Allen attacked Montreal.
On August 16, 1777, Henry Hamilton, and Jacob Schieffelin took part in the Battle of Bennington, VT. On October 7, 1778, they launched an expedition against Illinois.
Jacob Schieffelin and his friend, the French officer Philippe Rocheblave escaped from prison on April 19, 1780.
Jacob immediately contacted General Henry Clinton, the commander of the British Army in America.
Hannah Lawrence, considered a local beauty, was a young poet, who participated in a writing society.
Hannah came from a respected and proud Quaker family, who had arrived in the New World already in the 17th century and had settled on Long Island.
Jacob Schieffelin received correspondence from General Frederick Haldimand, Governor of the Quebec Province in British service.
[11] They arrived in Detroit on April 24, 1781, where Jacob returned to his position as Secretary of the British Government and bought a piece of land to build a home for his family.
On September 13, 1781, the first child of Hannah and Jacob was born in Detroit, the son Edward Lawrence Schieffelin.
After the end of the American War of Independence, the British Army was ordered back from the provinces on June 24, 1784.
Effingham Lawrence had moved to London and founded a pharmaceutical wholesale business to supply hospitals and pharmacies.
[1][13] The success of Lawrence & Schieffelin led Jacob to expand the business beyond pharmaceutical goods.
Jacob expanded the business to include international trade, buying several warehouses in New York City where he stored the imported goods.
John Lawrence withdrew from the partnership with Jacob in 1799 and opened a new store a few blocks away on 199 Pearl Street.
[15][16][2] In 1795, Jacob Schieffelin took the profit of 25,000 dollars from a shipload of cargo to buy land on a hill above the Hudson River in the north of Manhattan.
The new town of Manhattanville was to receive a church, a school, a harbor, residential buildings, and commercial space.
[18][2][19][20] In 1823, Hannah and Jacob Schieffelin donated money and a plot of land in Manhattanville for the construction of St. Mary's church.