Jesse B. Jackson: Paulding's Consul Who Saved Thousands

By Kim Sutton, Paulding County History Museum

Jesse B. Jackson was born in Paulding, Ohio in 1871. In 1908, he was appointed as the American Consul in Aleppo, Syria. He is credited with saving the lives of thousands of Armenian people in the Armenian Genocide that took place during and after WWI.

The Paulding County History Museum receives phone calls and inquiries about Paulding County history and the people who lived here quite often. One such phone call was received recently from California that was quite unique. The call was from Mr. Seth Ourfalian of Westminster, California. Mr. Ourfalian is retired from the computer science industry and became interested in history, traveling around the world studying various subjects. He is 100% Armenian but has been living in the United States since the 1980s.

If you are of Armenian descent, you know about Jesse Jackson. No, not the political activist who recently passed away, but the legendary Jesse B. Jackson from Paulding, Ohio who was appointed as consul to Aleppo, Syria in 1908. Jesse B. Jackson is credited with saving thousands of Armenian people from the genocide that was taking place during and after WWI.

Mr. Ourfalian found us through his investigation into the life of Jesse B. Jackson. He was able to locate Jesse’s great grandson, Jerett Jackson, in Dallas, Texas. Jerett told Mr. Ourfalian that his family had disposed of all the artifacts from Jesse’s estate and given everything to an organization that was going to start an Armenian Genocide Museum in Washington, D.C. Apparently, a lawsuit was filed against the group as there is some disagreement as to whether a genocide was actually taking place. The Turkish government has held the position that no genocide was planned nor happened and that is still their position today.

The museum was never built, and Mr. Jerett Jackson does not know what happened to all the artifacts they had donated. He did know, however, that there were a lot of other items that had been given to Jesse’s family descendants living in Columbus, Ohio. Jerett gave the contact info to Mr. Ourfalian, who gave them a call.

Yes! They had two tubs of letters, pictures, Armenian clothes and other items, but they had given it to three ladies from the Paulding County History Museum. They felt it should all go back to where Jesse came from, so they contacted our museum. Melinda Krick, Jane Nice and I made a trip to Columbus to bring it all back. Mr. Marcus Shera, research assistant and nephew of Seth Ourfalian, stopped in Paulding on his way from California to Philadelphia to start a new job to document all the letters, papers, photographs, etc. held by our museum. I met with Marcus for two days at the museum so he could complete his work.

We are now currently in the process of archiving the historic documents and other artifacts we brought back with us and will have some of them on display at the museum during the Spring Tea.

As it turns out, I am related to Jesse B. Jackson. His mother was Lucy Brown. My great-great-grandfather was George Brown, Lucy’s brother! Our common great-great-great-grandfather was Elijah J. Brown, one of the first doctors in Paulding County.