(1752–1810), was an American banker, entrepreneur, farmer, merchant and surveyor. He was a signer of the Constitution of the United States of America. Jacob Broom was described in the Official Papers of Delaware, written in 1909, as follows:
A fair example of the product of a sturdy, energetic, sagacious ancestry and evangelical Swedish orthodoxy, co-operating amid the trying environments of a struggling colony in an undeveloped land. …
He lived in one of the potential crises of history, in which and for which the sublime visions and words of prophets and apostles had developed and inspired a stalwart manhood. …
As it is an accepted fact that “the foundation of all permanent prosperity is a right regard for the Divine Being”, it is proper to say that Jacob Broom was a God-fearing man.1422
As a delegate from the State of Delaware, Jacob Broom would have complied with the requirements for office as stipulated by his state’s constitution, which included:
Article XXII. Every person who shall be chosen a member of either house, or appointed to any office or place of trust … shall … make and subscribe the following declaration, to wit: “I, _____, do profess faith in God the Father, and in Jesus Christ His only Son, and in the Holy Ghost, one God, blessed for evermore; and I do acknowledge the holy scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be given by divine inspiration.”1423
In a letter to his son, then a senior at Princeton University, Jacob Broom wrote in 1794:
Do not be so much flattered as to relax in your application; do not forget to be a Christian. I have said much to you on this head, and I hope an indelible impression is made.1424