Thornwell Jacobs (February 15, 1877 – August 4, 1956) was a professor, historian, author, fundraiser, university founder, and Presbyterian minister. He earned degrees from Presbyterian College in South Carolina and the Princeton Theological Seminary in New Jersey. He wrote The Law of White Circle, a novel about mulattos (people of mixed white and black ancestry) set during the Atlanta race massacre of 1906. Jacobs reestablished Oglethorpe University, becoming its president and developing intense educational programs. His motivation for this was that his grandfather attended the original college and told him of educated people that had graduated from it to become productive citizens in society. Unfortunately, it had been forced to cease functioning because of the American Civil War. He conceived the Crypt of Civilization time capsule idea for a historic time collection of 1930s cultural objects sealed in a specially designed place on campus for people of the 82nd century to find to see how the people on Earth lived in the 20th century. Early life Jacobs was born to Reverend William Plumer Jacob and the former Mary Jane Dillard at Thornwell Orphanage in Clinton, South Carolina, on February 15, 1877. The orphanage was organized and developed by his father. Jacobs learned the printing trade in his early teens. In 1895, when he was 18 years old, he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1894 and Master of Arts degree from Presbyterian College of South Carolina in 1895. He was later honored by his alma mater with the Doctor of Letters degree. After that he attended Princeton Theological Seminary in New Jersey and graduated in 1899 with a Bachelor of Divinity degree. Adult life Jacobs served as a Presbyterian pastor in Morganton, North Carolina, from 1900 to 1903. After this time he became vice president of Thornwell Orphanage and began fundraising for the organization. In 1905, Jacobs became involved in religious publications in Nashville, Tennessee. He visited Atlanta after the Atlanta Massacre race riots of September 1906 and then in Nashville wrote a novel based on it about the mulatto as a third race, The Law of White Circle (1908). In 1909, Jacobs returned to Atlanta for a fundraising project to benefit the growth of Agnes Scott College. He then established a Presbyterian college in Atlanta. He also planned to reestablish the old Oglethorpe University near Atlanta, where his grandfather, Ferdinand, had been a faculty member. His grandfather had