Jacob Michael Nist (March 28, 1839August 5, 1907) was a pioneering Seattle-based American businessman who established a container manufacturing company. Nist's company has been continuously owned and operated by six generations of the Nist family since 1889. A century after the founding of Queen City Box Manufacturing Company, Washington's Governor Booth Gardner honored Nist and his family, proclaiming October 23, 1989, to be "Nist Family Day", citing the company's contributions to the state's economy. As of 2015, the Seattle-Tacoma Box Company is an international company producing containers, storage vaults and packaging, with headquarters in Kent, Washington, as well as operations in Alaska, California, Hawaii, Oregon, and New Zealand. Early years Nist was born in Louisville, Kentucky, the son of Joseph and Katharina Minnich Nist. Before 1850 his parents moved the family from Kentucky to the Colony of St. Mary's, a community of German Catholic settlers in Benzinger Township, Elk County, Pennsylvania. Nist married Mary Anna Wagner on October 15, 1860, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he farmed for almost two decades and was a grocer. Their nine children were born in Pittsburgh: Michael, Mary Margaret and Barbara (who both died in early childhood), George, Jacob, John, Aloysius, Joseph and Anna. When Nist was 39 years old, the family moved to Beaver, Kansas, where he farmed and had a mercantile business. Later years By late 1880, the Nist family had moved to Seattle, Washington, where he worked as a carpenter at the Seattle Lumber and Commercial Company. When that company was destroyed in the Great Seattle Fire on June 6, 1889, Nist and his son Michael launched Queen City Box Manufacturing next to his home on the Northeast corner of Thomas and Rollin, which later became Westlake Avenue North. Honoring the family's Catholic religious faith, two of Nist's sons joined the Redemptorist ministry. Brother Raymond (John A. Nist) served parishes in Baltimore, Maryland, and Ephrata, Pennsylvania. Brother Silverius (Joseph Franz Nist) served in Baltimore, Buffalo, Boston, and Philadelphia. After the death of his wife Mary Ann on November 11, 1897, Nist married Josephine Webber Clavadetscher on August 22, 1900, and his youngest daughter Catherine was born in 1902. John Hopcroft, his grandson from that second marriage, is a renowned theoretical computer scientist. When Jacob Nist constructed a new house in 1906 at 221 6th Avenue N., he installed both gas and electric lighting, as he believed electricity was too new to be