Jaquith, Jesse W.

Born: 1811-04-20 New Hampshire

Died: 1881-XX-XX Missouri

Jesse W. Jaquith was a farmer, shoemaker, druggist, associate judge, public servant, newspaper editor, Democrat, Mason, and member of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Schooled in his native New Hampshire, he farmed and was trained in shoemaking. In October 1834, he married Arvilla Corson. He relocated to Edgar County, Illinois in 1839. Arvilla most likely died sometime before 1840, as, in November of that year, he married Katharine A. Wilson. They had at least six children together. He continued shoemaking in Edgar County for a time before moving to Champaign County, Illinois. In 1849, voters elected him associate judge of the county court. In 1850 he worked as a druggist in Urbana, Illinois and owned $525 in real property. In April 1853, he received appointment as postmaster for Urbana. An active member of the community, he served as the county's school commissioner briefly in 1854, was elected alderman of the city's third ward in 1855, and was elected mayor of Urbana, serving from June 1857 to June 1858. By the late-1850s, he was also a partner in the Urbana-based pharmaceutical firm Jaquith & Miller. From 1860 to 1861, he edited Hickory Boy, a Democratic newspaper that supported Stephen A. Douglas in the 1860 Federal Election. Jaquith later moved to Holden, Missouri, where he resumed shoemaking until his death.

New Hampshire, U.S., Birth Records, 1631-1920 (Lehi, UT: Ancestry.com Operations, 2021); New Hampshire, U.S., Marriage and Divorce Records, 1659-1947 (Provo, UT: Ancestry.com Operations, 2013); Illinois Statewide Marriage Index, Edgar County, 2 November 1840, Illinois State Archives, Springfield, IL; U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), Urbana, Champaign County, IL, 97; Record of Appointment of Postmasters, 1832-1971, NARA Microfilm Publication, M841, 145 rolls, Records of the Post Office Department, RG 28, 1855-1865, 20a:15, National Archives Building, Washington, DC.; U.S. Census Office, Ninth Census of the United States (1870), Johnson County, MO, 8; Jonathan Fairbanks and Clyde Edwin Tuck, Past and Present of Greene County, Missouri (Indianapolis, IN: A. W. Bowen, 1915), 2:1297-98; J. R. Stewart, ed., A Standard History of Champaign County Illinois (Chicago and New York: Lewis, 1918), 1:186, 226-27, 430-31; Franklin William Scott, Newspapers and Periodicals of Illinois, 1814-1879, vol. 6 of Collections of the Illinois State Historical Library (Springfield: Illinois State Historical Library, 1910), 338; George W. Hawes, comp., Illinois State Gazetteer and Business Directory for 1858 and 1859 (Chicago: George W. Hawes, 1859), 218.