Jacob Pitman

Jacob Pitman (28 November 1810 – 12 March 1890) was an architect, builder and educator in the colonies of South Australia and New South Wales. He was a brother of Isaac Pitman and associated with his development of shorthand transcription.

Pitman was born in Trowbridge, Wiltshire, the eldest son of Samuel Pitman and his wife Maria, née Davis. He was apprenticed to a local builder then worked for a building firm in London. They emigrated to South Australia with daughters Melissa and Sarah in the Trusty, arriving 15 May 1838. During the journey he made friends with William Holden, who was to have a journalistic career in Adelaide.

He set up as a builder and architect at 84, then 90, Rundle Street east. He invested heavily in land, including in 1839 an 80 acres (32 ha) section (Section 824), one allotment of which, near the present corner of Grand Junction and Valley Roads, he sold to Holden, who used it to set up a butcher's shop and general store. It was Holden who dubbed the area Hope Valley. Pitman was declared insolvent in 1843 during a depression, and forced to unload these assets, but by the 1850s he was back in work, bridge-building on the River Torrens and near Echunga.

He founded the a branch of the Swedenborgian Church in Adelaide and served as its minister from 1844 to 1859, and from 1846 taught shorthand following his brother's system. He left for Melbourne in 1870, though he did return to Adelaide on occasion: his design for the Institute and Museum building on North Terrace won second prize in 1874; his wife died in Adelaide in 1881.

He moved to Camperdown, New South Wales, where he taught Pitman shorthand, for a time associated with the Sydney Technical College. He continued his association with Swedenborgianism; he married again and died in 1890 and was buried in Rookwood Cemetery, where his epitaph is uniquely written phonetically, using the Pitman scheme of reformed spelling.

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