Jacob Tome
Jacob Tome was an American banker, philanthropist, and politician who died as one of the richest men in the United States. He was the first millionaire of Cecil County, Maryland, and an accomplished philanthropist, giving money to colleges, churches, and schools, including establishing the Tome School.
Early life
Jacob Tome was born on August 13, 1810, in Hanover or Manheim Township in York County, Pennsylvania, to Christina and Christian Thom. At the age of 16, he worked for a farmer in York County; 15 months later, he became a superintendent of fisheries on Stony Island on the Susquehanna River. In 1830, he worked for a manufacturer of tinware in Marietta, Pennsylvania, for two years, and then became a teacher in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania.Career
Business career
In 1833, he moved to Port Deposit, Maryland, to work at Boggs' Hotel. He moved to Philadelphia for a short time to take up bookkeeping, but returned to Port Deposit in 1834.In 1834, he and David Rinehart, a Marietta banker and lumber dealer, founded the Tome & Rinehart lumber company, which prospered and would last until 1853. In 1849, he formed a partnership with the owners of the steamboat Portsmouth and Captain Masen L. Weems to establish the Baltimore and Fredericksburg Steamboat Company. In 1855, he and John and Thomas C. Bond formed the Bond Brothers & Co. lumber company. Through Bond Brothers & Co. and his own personal accounts, he invested in timber lands in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. With his nephew, J.W. Reynolds, he formed J. Tome & Co., a fertilizer and agriculture equipment company.
He served as the president of the Baltimore and Susquehanna Steamboat Company; as a director of the Conowingo Bridge Company, as a director of the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad, and as a director of the Columbia and Port Deposit Railroad. He was also a large stockholder in the Delaware Railroad Company.
Political career
He was a Union Republican and a supporter of Abraham Lincoln during the American Civil War. From 1864 to 1867, Tome represented Cecil County in the Maryland Senate. In 1865, he was elected as the chairman of the Senate finance committee. In 1871, he was nominated as the Union Republican candidate for Governor of Maryland, losing to William Pinkney Whyte.Banking career
In 1850, Tome obtained a charter for the Cecil Bank at Port Deposit. The bank quickly grew and became a national bank. In 1868, he purchased the Elkton National Bank. In 1865, he opened a bank the National Bank in Fredericksburg, Virginia, which his nephew John Creswell became president of. He owned stock in a number of Baltimore banks and a majority stake in the Citizens' National Bank of Hagerstown, Maryland.Personal life
About 1850, Tome erected a fine, substantial home and in the 1870s he remodeled the structure. This renovation in the grand Second Empire Style, greatly enlarged the mansion. It had a mansard roof and wrought iron balconies, along with a substantial tower, which housed Tome's bank and office. In 1948, fifty years after his death, the "palatial three-story granite block home," was razed to make way for a swimming pool operated by the Port Deposit Lions Club.Tome married Caroline M. Webb, an aunt of John Creswell, on December 6, 1841. Together, they had three children, but they all died in infancy. She died on February 16, 1874. He married Evalyn S. Nesbitt on October 1, 1884. Evalyn Tome was the richest woman in the state of Maryland; after his death, she married Joseph Irwin France, a Senator and U.S. presidential candidate.