Jacob W. Hart was born on February 2, 1838, in Stark County, Ohio, to Charles and Catharine Hart. He eventually moved to Roanoke, Indiana, and he worked as an apprentice carpenter in the household of John Shearer.

 

He enlisted in the Union army on December 13, 1861, and he mustered in as a corporal in Company E of the 47^th Indiana Infantry. In 1863, he was promoted to 1^st lieutenant in Company E of the 93^rd USCT Infantry. In the summer of 1864, army officials detailed him to work as an engineer in Berwick, Louisiana. He remained devoted to the Union cause. In October 1864, he wrote that he “still [had] the best courage that our arms will eventually be victorious and that soon to[o].” He lamented that Union soldiers were “wearing our lives away for a most unjust and wicked war wich was brought upon us by a set of traitors to this once glorious Union.” He insisted that the “people of the North could if we were all of one opinion suppress this rebellion in six months but a house divided against it self can not stand…[I]f the North does not join in mass…we surely will fail in putting down this present rebellion.”

 

He resigned on May 23, 1865, explaining that he had “served honestly and faithfully in the U.S. Army for nearly four years leaving my family in very poor circumstances and my business entirely unsettled which renders it necessary that I should be at home.” Now that most Confederate armies had surrendered, he believed that “my services can be spared now without working injury to the government as from all appearances the war is at an end.”

 

He married Jennie E. Branyan on August 20, 1863, and they had at least four children: William, born around 1866; Ella, born around 1871; Etta, born around 1874; and Ervin, born around 1882. They lived in Roanoke, and Hart worked as a carpenter. By 1870, he owned $1,000 of real estate and $200 of personal property. He applied for a federal pension in July 1870 and eventually secured one. According to a local writer, he was an “honorable citizen, always willing to lend a helping land.” He supported the Republican Party, and he served as postmaster of Roanoke from October 1889 until October 1893. He died in Roanoke on November 3, 1895, “after an illness of several weeks.”

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