Michael Jacobs was born January 18, 1808 in Waynesboro, Franklin County, Pennsylvania. Licensed as a Lutheran minister in the Western Pennsylvania Synod in 1832, he served as one of the pastors at Christ Lutheran Church in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. From 1828 to 1865 he also served as a professor of mathematics and natural science at the Gettysburg Classical School, which became Pennsylvania College in 1832. He is particularly remembered for his published observations of the battle of Gettysburg in Notes on the Rebel Invasion of Maryland and Pennsylvania and the Battle of Gettysburg (Philadelphia, 1863). Jacobs died at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania on July 22, 1871.