Travis Beal Jacobs, Fletcher D. Proctor Professor Emeritus of American History at Middlebury College, the son of Albert C. and Loretta Beal Jacobs, died at his home in Bridport, Vt., on September 16, surrounded by his loved ones.
He graduated from Deerfield Academy and Princeton University ’58 cum laude. Planning to attend Columbia Law School, at the last minute he switched to the graduate program in American history for his PhD. In 1965 he joined the faculty at Middlebury College and soon began teaching a popular two-semester lecture course on 20th-century American history. He served as department chair for 17 years. “One of the first … chairs to embrace the College’s aspirations in minority recruiting,” he was ”certainly the most conspicuously successful.” His publications include America and the Russo-Finnish Winter War, 1939-1940; coediting Navigating the Rapids, 1918-1971, the diaries of Adolf A. Berle, an FDR brain truster; and Eisenhower at Columbia. He also edited the Middlebury College General Catalogue: Bicentennial Edition, 2000, a who was who and who’s who of the College. He received several Earhart Foundation Fellowships; taught in Tunis on a Fulbright; served on the Presidential Studies Quarterly editorial board; and attended many Salzburg Seminars on American Studies. He retired as Fletcher D. Proctor Emeritus of American History in 2008.
He spent many summers on Chappaquiddick Island, Edgartown, Mass., many of them at his family’s Stanford White house at Green Pastures on Katama Bay. Since 2014 he spent time throughout the year at Chazy Lake in the Adirondacks.
An early member of Middlebury Town and Gown, he regularly attended the lunches until his health faded, and he delivered a handful of talks. He also enjoyed the Addison-Bridport Horse Thief Society. He was president of the Henry Sheldon Museum during the capital campaign that led to the Paris Fletcher Community Center; he remained a strong supporter of its Research Center, with its valuable Vermont history collections, and in 2021 he established the J. Robert Maguire Research Fund. He leaves unfinished a study of the late Vermonter Robert T. Stafford, former governor, U.S. Congressman and U.S. Senator. Early in the 21st century, he and his traveling companion, Constance Carroll, took a series of trips to Europe, ranging from France to Hungary; from Italy, Sicily, Tunisia and Malta to Russia and Finland.
His family is grateful for assistance from Addison County Home Health & Hospice and UVM Oncology. Besides his parents, he was predeceased by two older sisters and two former wives, one Eleanor T. Morison, the mother of his sons, T. Beal Jacobs Jr. and Holmes M. Jacobs, who own Two Brothers Tavern in Middlebury. He had three grandchildren whom he lovingly adored, Jackson, Piper and Sally Jacobs. A memorial will be held at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Middlebury, Vt., on October 18.