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Caresse Crosby
And the Jacob family
Of the Isle of Wight

The Jacob family coat of arms, as used by William Jacob of Norland Square, London, and the Jacobs family in America

The seal of Bartholomew Jacob of Whitwell (great-great-great grandfather of Carresse) on a deed of 1727

Caresse (Mary Phelps Jacobs) in one of the state rooms at Rocca Sinibalda

My great great Grandmother, Harriette Heywood (nee Jacob). Her uncle, Leonard, emigrated to the States

Harriette's brother, my great great great Uncle, William Heaton Jacob

William Dickins, Heywood, my great Grandfather, Caresse's cousin

My Grandmother, Diana Heywood (Granddaughter of Harriette Jacob)as a deb, dressed by Hartnell, at Buckingham Palace in 1936 - King Edward VIII's ill-received afternoon court presentation.

An oil portrait of Stephen Dempster Heywood, brother of Diana. Here he is outside the Heywood family house in Staffordshire, Little Onn Hall. Like Caresse and the other Jacob cousins, Stephen, Barbara and Diana Heywood were brought up with hunting - it ran in their veins.

Parkfield House, Middleton, Lancashire - home of Caresse's cousins, the Heywoods

Mary Phelps Jacob (variously Mrs Richard Peabody, Mrs Harry Crosby and the Principessa di Rocca Sinibalda), otherwise known as Caresse Crosby, must be the most fascinating of my distant cousins. My Great Grandfather and her were cousins and lived across the Atlantic from each other - one in the bustle of New York, and the other outside smoggy, industrial Manchester.

Caresse's Grandfather, Leonard Jacob, like my great great great Grandfather, was born at Chale Abbey, the Jacob family house on the Isle of Wight. Their father, William Hearn Jacob, was one of the more colorful members of the gentry on the island. By all accounts he hunted to his hearts content and entertained expensively - he spent so much that he had to be bailed out by his son, Caresse's grandfather Leonard, when his debt-riven estate was sold. William Hearn Jacob owned the Chale estate, as well as land at Whitwell and Blackgang Chine, where he built the hotel. He had inherited this from his father, William Jacob. Despite William leaving £50,000 (a very large sum in the early years of the nineteenth century), this was divided between numerous family members, which encumbered the estate enormously. This was partly because William Hearn Jacob had been disinherited for some time because he married, without permission, Ann Tucker. His father had hoped he would marry one of the Worlseys of Billingham, rather than the daughter of a successful tradesman. On his deathbed William was persuaded by his closest friend, Sir Leonard Worsley Holmes Bt, to reinstate his son as his principal heir. Caresse was, through her father, conscious of her English family's vaguely aristocratic past. One of the Jacob family's greatest prides was their descent from the Oglander family of Nunwell, and thence from the Plantagenets and co. A distant forbear had married Dowsabel Oglander, daughter of Sir George Oglander. William Hearn Jacob (the second), Caresse's father, named his favorite cow 'Dowsabelle'. Other ancestors included the Leigh family of Northcourt, the Hearns and Jolliffes of Haseley Manor, the Dingleys of Wolverton Manor, the Lytes of Lytes Cary, the Herons of Addiscombe and the Barons Poyntz.

Robert Jacob of Chale Abbey - Caresse's Great Great Uncle

Chale Abbey, seat of the Jacob family, by W B Cooke, in 1815

Chale Abbey from the north-east

The Jacob family tomb in Chale

Caresse's father, William Hearn Jacob (the younger)

Leonoard Jacob's birthplace, Chale Abbey, is one of the oldest houses on the Isle of Wight. The centre of the house was, and is, a Mediaeval great hall and undercroft. The large Gothic window at the 'high end' was the reason Leonard's father, William Hearn Jacob, changed the name of the house from Chale Manor to Chale Abbey. It was never ecclesiastical. The Chale estate was acquired by the Jacob family in 1796. At the time the family were 'substantial landowners and owned a celebrated pack of hounds'. William's father, William Jacob, left a £50,000 fortune in 1818. William's mother, Harriet Hearn of Haseley Manor, brought further wealth to the family in the form of a large dowry. The Jacob family wealth was kept away from William Hearn Jacob because he had married 'beneath him' to Ann Tucker. Ann was also, maternally, a Russell of Kern and Yeverland - so rather grander than the Jacobs! Two of Harriet Jacob's ancestors, Matthew and John Hearn (Heron) were Rectors of Chale in the seventeenth century. The Hearn windows at Chale are in memory of these men, one of whom was buried in front of the Manor Altar in the church. George Arnold Hearn of America, donated them.It would be the Hearn side of the family that brought Caresse's grandfather to the United States. More of that later.

William Hearn Jacob's hotel at Blackgang - an extraordinary mix of Swiss and Greek styles...

Three of the Hearn windows in Chale Church

The organ at Chale Church donated by George Arnold Hearn

Nunwell - seat of the Oglanders

Wolverton - seat of the Dingleys

Haseley Manor, home of the Hearns and, before that, the Jolliffes.

The Drawing Room, Haseley Manor

Caresse's grandfather, Leonard, was named after his Godfather Sir Leonard Worsley Holmes, Bart. He was educated at Charterhouse School,where his Uncle, Richard Tucker, was Manciple. Tucker knew Charles Dickins and was said to be the influence for his character Mr Pickwick. Leonard Jacob left then half way through to 'lead a high life of hunting and dallying with the girls'. His school career is in marked contrast to his brother, Henry Jacobs, who became Dean of Christchurch, new Zealand, and one of the most celebrated churchmen of the Victorian era. Leonard Jacob was the self-styled black sheep of the family.

A portrait of Robert Tucker of Newport, Caresse's great great Grandfather

Dean Henry Jacocs, Caresse's great uncle

The Hearn blazon

Leonard's great uncle, George Hearn, had married Mary Arnold. His Jacob aunt had also married an Arnold. Another old Isle of Wight family, the Arnolds went to New York and started, in 1825, one of the first dry goods stores in New York. After William Hearn Jacob's death his mother, Harriet Jacob (nee Hearn), moved to New York to be with her nephew, James Arnold Hearn. James was the founder of Hearn's Department Store, for many years Macy's chief rival in New York. Hearn emigrated to Philadelphia in 1821. Starting as a clerk, he learned the dry goods business there and in 1834 moved to New York City, going into business with his uncle Aaron Arnold (who founded Arnold, Constable, & Co.)According to his New York Times obituary, James, by 1879, had the distinction of having prospered on Broadway longer than any other dry goods merchant. That year, the store relocated to 14th Street, half a block from Macy's. Over the next decades the two stores engaged in frequent cutthroat competition, often lowering prices to pennies on the dollar. Hearn's remained a fixture on 14th Street until it closed in 1955. Some of the original buildings, heavily altered, still stand on the south side of 14th Street just west of 5th Avenue.

Arnold & Constable, Fifth Avenue

James Arnold Hearn's grave, Green-Wood Cemetry, Brooklyn, New York. The coat of arms in the centre is that of the Hearn/Heron of Ford Castle, Northumberland, from whom they descended.

The Hearn Obelisk at Woodlawn Cemetery, Bronx

James's son, George Arnold Hearn of 46 East Sixty Ninth Street, became one of the foremost American art collectors, and he left a huge gift of art to the Metropolitan Museum in New York. He died in 1913 and left around nineteen million dollars.

George Arnold Hearn

On August 9th, 1844, at the age of 18, Caresse's grandfather, Leonard Jacob, boarded the ship "Quebec" off Spithead England. He emigrated to the United States, settled in New York with his Hearn cousins, became a partner in the dry goods business, and, thirty years later, acquired more than 30,000 acres of land just south of San Antonio, Texas. He also owned East Island, on Long Island Sound, which was later bought by Caresse's uncle by marriage, John Pierpont (JP) Morgan. Both Caresse's mother and grandmother came from well-established and interesting American families, the Phelps and Lawrences, respectively.

Caresse's English Jacob cousins were doing interesting things too. One of her father's cousins, Harriette Jacob, had married the famous Irish professor of Ethnology, Augustus Henry Keane and another, Robert Tucker, had served in the Peninsula War in both Spain and Portugal under Arthur Wellesley (later Duke of Wellington) and became one of the foremost Victorian mathematicians. He was, for 35 years, Secretary of the London Mathematical Society. The first systematic study of harmonic quadrilaterals (!) was carried out by Robert. The 'Tucker Collection' of photographs of great mathematicians is now housed at De Morgan House in London.

Robert Tucker

Caresse also used triangles in her invention - she was the first recipient of a patent for the modern bra!

Mary Phelps Jacob's patent

Caresse went on to do many more amazing things - she brought Dali to the States, founded, with her husband Harry Crosby, the Black Sun Press and became the Principessa di Rocca Sinibalda - a castle she bought in Lazio, Italy.

I am not sure what her formal and somewhat stately English cousins would have thought of her wild and colourful lifestyle, but we owe her an enormous debt - not just the ladies, for whom she gave much wished for support, but the artists she promoted tirelessly all through her life.

I hope this piece has filled in a few gaps about the interesting group of ancestors she was proud to call her own.