Jacob Broom

(1752-25 April 1810)

Jacob Broom spent most of his life as a fairly inconspicuous officeholder in Delaware, his service in the Philadelphia Convention being the highlight of that career. He was son of a blacksmith father and a Quaker mother. He first attained local office in 1776, worked as a surveyor during the war, was elected to office in Wilmington after the war, and went to both the a 1786 Annapolis Convention and the Philadelphia Convention, as one of Delaware’s five delegates. In only one instance did he contribute substantially to the outcome of the Convention: after the small states n July 16^th had won a fragile agreement that there would be a two house national legislature with equal state representation in one of those houses, the large states delegates (backers of the Virginia Plan and representation based on population) threatened to go home. Broom spoke for compromise and the need to present the people with some plan of union, however aspects of it might be unpopular with some delegates.

Broom spent the remainder of his life acquiring considerable wealth in entrepreneurial activity – banking, internal improvements, and the erection of the state’s first cotton mill. In his will, he left money to a female Quaker benevolent association for the schooling of African Americans.