Jacob M. Sanders was born around 1860 in Missouri to John W. Sanders and Ritty Ann Selsor. His father was a farmer who owned $400 of real estate and $175 of personal property. The family lived in Medicine, Missouri, until the 1860s, when they moved to Washington, Missouri. By 1880, Sanders was working as a laborer on his father’s farm. He married a woman named Mary Elizabeth around 1884, and they had at least four children: Clifford, born around 1883; Rufus, born around 1886; Stella, born around 1888; and Minnie, born around 1894. They lived in Medicine, Missouri, and Sanders worked as a farmer. He died in 1938.