Bunn, Jacob

Born: 1814-03-18 Hunterdon County, New Jersey

Died: 1897-10-16 Springfield, Illinois

Bunn came to Illinois in 1836 and resided for a time in Springfield. He soon moved to Beardstown, and afterwards to Naples, but returned to Springfield on July 1, 1840, and established the grocery firm of McConnell, Bunn, and Company. Bunn soon purchased the interests of his partners and established the wholesale house of Jacob Bunn. By 1850, Bunn possessed real estate valued at $17,000. In 1851, Bunn married Elizabeth Ferguson, who died in 1886. They had four sons and two daughters together. In 1856, Bunn was treasurer of the first library association in Springfield. In 1858, his business had assumed such proportions that he decided to add a separate department devoted exclusively to banking. For more than twenty years, he conducted the largest business of its kind in central Illinois. In 1860, Bunn was a banker with real estate valued at $64,000 and personal property worth $135,000. Bunn was a pallbearer at Abraham Lincoln's funeral.

Bruce Alexander Campbell, The Sangamon Saga: 200 Years: An Illustrated Bicentennial History of Sangamon County (Springfield, IL: Phillips Brothers, 1976), 81; Springfield Sunday Journal (IL), 17 October 1897, 7:4; U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), Sangamon County, IL, 125; U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States (1860), Sangamon County, IL, 133; George W. Smith, History of Illinois and Her People (Chicago: The American Historical Society, 1927), 4:201. Illustration courtesy of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library, Springfield, IL.