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"Jacob Bunn: Legacy of an Illinois Industrial Pioneer" is a biography of a 19th century man who left New Jersey ("Bunn Valley" near Alexandria in Hunterdon County, to be precise) for the greener fields of the frontier, Illinois.

Jacob Bunn, 1814-1897, is the central person in the book. His activities, companies, accomplishments, successes and failures, and most important of all, his legacy of vision, integrity, and leadership, are what the book is about.

Companies that were either started by Jacob Bunn and his colleagues, or were started by various members of his family later, include the Illinois Watch Co., Sangamo Electric Co., Bunn Capitol Grocery Co., Bunn-o-Matic Co., Chicago-Republican Newspaper, Inter-Ocean Newspaper, J. Bunn Bank, Springfield Marine Bank, and many others. 

Jacob and his brother John Whitfield Bunn were involved in numerous Illinois corporations in the central part of the state as well as in Chicago and other parts of the Midwest.

They financed Lincoln's presidential campaign. They were involved with people (Jerome I. Case, Charles Schwab, Morris Selz, John V. Farwell, Marshall Field, Abraham Lincoln, Watson Bradley Dickerman, and so many, many others) who built the socio/political/corporate base of the United States, who later went on to have major positions in the New York Stock Exchange, Norfolk and Southern Railroad, Case Agricultural Machinery, and other railroads and department stores, and corporations.. 

Bunn was a visionary whose greatest legacy was honor, not money. He died penniless. But his debts, resulting from the Panic of 1873
and his bank's failure, were repaid in full, with interest, by his children by 1925.