Sowas, Jacob
Jacob Sowas may have been the son of Samuel Sowas from the Eastern Pequot community, the Sowas family being prominently married into leadership families at Eastern Pequot, Mohegan, and Narragansett.
Jacob Sowas was the husband of Sarah, sometimes referred to as Sarah Jacobs. He was baptized and admitted into the Stonington 1st Church in 1742, a year after his wife. The couple had at least five children, three of whom, Jacob, Richard and Mary, were baptized in the summer of 1736. Son, Silas, was baptized in January of the following year and their daughter, Annie, in April of 1739.
Jacob and his family lived on the lands set aside for the tribe in what was then Stonington, now North Stonington. Jacob worked on and off for Jonathan Wheeler in Stonington, CT from 1741-1753. Along with others leaders of the tribe Jacob signed a petition in May of 1749 complaining of English encroachment on Eastern Pequot land.
Jacob Sowas, occassionally referred to as Blind Jacob, signed an Eastern Pequot petition with others of the Tribe in October of 1766 seeking local doctor Charles Phelps as their new overseer to replace an ineffectual one. By 1771 Jacob Sowas was, according to the Reverend Joseph Fish, both blind and old and as such was distributed a blanket courtesy of the Commissioners of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel both that year and later in the winter of 1773. It was at Blind Jacob’s house that Fish generally met with the Indians.
Wheeler, First Congregational Church, Brown and Rose, Black Roots, 511; IP 1.2.40 (1749.05.23.00), IP 1.2.250 (1766.10.06.00), Fish, 1st Book (1775.03.27.01)