Frances Wisebart Jacobs - Death and Memorial

Death and Memorial

Jacobs, ill herself, delivered medicine to a sick child on a rainy night in 1892. She contracted pneumonia and was hospitalized at Marquette Sanitorium in Denver and died on November 3, 1892, following the illness that lasted for three months.

Over 4,000 people attended her funeral at the Temple Emanuel which was open to people of all faiths, classes, and races. A week later, a memorial service was held at the First Congregational Church. Speakers included prominent Denver people, such as the city's mayor, and the governor of Colorado. J.S. Appel, her coworker said "For long years she gave her time and her services to the practical work of charity, and looked more poor and wretched people in the face than any other person in Denver. The keynote of her character was… her great fund of humor that made her see the bright side of everything, that enabled her to devote her life to the work of saving and uplifting humanity… This love of humor was the safety valve that kept her heart from bursting at the sorrows and miseries she beheld."

Jacobs is memorialized as one of 16 Colorado pioneers, and the only woman, in a stained glass window at the Colorado state capitol Rotunda. In 1994, Frances was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame, and in 2000 Jacobs and the National Jewish Medical and Research Center were awarded the Denver Mayor's Millennium Award.

A bronze statue sits in the lobby of the National Jewish Medical and Research Center, a memorial to Jacobs, with her holding a bag of medicines and soaps.