 Jacob was a very close friend and business partner of his first cousin, Pat Stevens, born just a few weeks before Jacob in October 1823. They were raised to maturity together by the lovely Matilda Stewart Phinizy, and it was together in the 50s they bought land in in Bolivar Co., Mississippi, on the banks of the river, during the settling and clearing of the vast Yazoo tract. They endured flood after flood and eventually had to put the landup for sale about 1861 at the beginning of the war. Pat was elected to the Georgia House, and Jacob joined the Army, where in 1862 he was killed at the Second Manassas on the 30th August, leading the Oglethorpe Rifles of the 8th Georgians. We have his letters home to Pat. General Beauregard saluted the Regiment for their conduct that day. The captain rests on the battlefield beneath the rolling hills to this day. (This photo owes to the courtesy of Joan Doughty, another remarkable Phinizy researcher, 2001.) |