The Man mom Nogales

Isaacson's unmarked grave at Machpelah.

Seventy-five years ago this week
Jacob Isaacson died and was
buried in Detroit. Today, his grave
is unmarked and no family comes
to visit. Yet Jacob Isaacson is
anything but anonymous to the
residents of an Arizona city.

ELIZABETH APPLEBAUM ASSISTANT EDITOR

18

O

n the left is a

tombstone
marked Bell, on
the right a grave
for Simon Cohen,
and in the middle:
what appears to be nothing.
It's a gentle patch of land,
well-cared for and peaceful.
But the man who lies buried
in this unmarked plot in section
B, row 3 of Machpelah Ceme-
tery in Ferndale, Mich., was
anything but sedate. He was,
family said, daring and bold and
vigorous, a fine singer who loved
dogs and wild horses, a man in-
trepid enough to travel to un-
tamed Arizona, Indian country,
and establish a new town.
His name was Jacob Isaac-
son.
Isaacson, who died 75 years
ago this week, was born in 1853

in Kuldiga, Latvia, 84 miles
west of Riga. His father's name
was Simon; his mother was Yet-
tie.
As a young man, Jacob left
Latvia for London, then came
to the United States with his
parents and elder brother,
Isaac. Two sisters, Carrie and
Birdie, and a brother, John,
were born in the United States.
The family lived first in New
York state, then went to San
Francisco, where the parents
and sisters remained.
In 1880, Jacob and Isaac
Isaacson left for Tucson, Ariz.,
where they stayed for one
month. They worked as ped-
dlers, selling clothing and
kitchenware, before settling in
an area — chosen because a
railroad stop was about to be es-
tablished there for travelers be-

tween Tucson and Mexico —
that would later become the city
of Nogales.
Most Jews who came to
America at the time stayed in
New York or along the East
Coast. But Jacob was "a restless
lad (who) craved adventure in
the wilds of western America,"
writes Joseph Stocker in Jew-
ish Roots in Arizona. "His fa-
ther, Simon, called him the
fearless one.' "
Arizona in the late 1880s was
a rough-and-tumble world of
Apache Indians, stagecoach
travel and gold prospecting. (It
did not even become a state un-
til 1912). When the Isaacson
brothers sett there, James
Garfield was president of the
United States.
One of the brothers' projects
upon arriving in the future No-