JACOB CUMSON, whose home for many years has been on a farm in Jackson township, was born in Harrison county, Ohio, June 20, 1848, a son of James and Nancy (Early) Cumson, natives respectively of Greene county, Pennsylvania, and of Scotland. When twenty years of age, in 1807, James Cumson went to Ohio and became a farmer and cabinetmaker there, and his life's labors were ended in death in about 1878, surviving his wife for about ten years, and they both lie buried in Ohio.
Jacob Cumson attended school in Harrison county, Ohio, during his boyhood days, and he has practically cared for himself since the early age of sixteen years. At this time, about 1864, he obtained a government position in the quartermaster's department, where he remained for about eighteen months, and he then worked for others until 1867, after which he farmed on rented land in Guernsey county for one year. At the close of that period he bought a little twenty acre farm in Ohio, and lived and labored there until he sold the land and came to Sullivan county, Indiana, in 1883, here buying forty acres, where he now lives. He has sold the coal which underlies this tract, and he also owns eighty acres of land about half a mile northeast and thirty-six acres in Cass township, renting about twenty-five acres of these tracts, while on the remainder he is engaged in general farming and stock raising. He is a Republican in politics, and is now serving as a justice of the peace, and to his honor it may be said that he was elected to this office without his knowledge.
On the 13th of October, 1868, Mr. Cumson married Sarah E. Lambright, who was born in Harrison county, Ohio, a daughter of Henry and Mary Jane (Shivers) Lambright, natives respectively of Germany and of Ohio. They came to Sullivan county in 1882 and bought a farm in Cass township, where the father died in 1904 and the mother about fourteen years previously. Mrs. Cumson has also passed away, dying on the 30th of April, 1907, after becoming the mother of three children, but only Mary Elizabeth, the youngest, is now living, the two others having died in infancy. Mr. Cumson is a member of the Methodist church.