Born in Fresno County in 1863, Mrs. Julia Fink Jacobs is a native daughter of California and the child of Peter and Eliza (Deakin) Fink, early pioneers who arrived in the state during the 1849 Gold Rush before settling into agricultural life. Reared in Fresno County among a family of six children, she spent her early years on the Fink family estate.

In 1886, she married Alfred T. Marsh, a former deputy sheriff in Arizona, where the couple resided for twelve years and raised four surviving children: Mrs. E. C. Pulliam, Maggie, Alice, and Ralph, who later served in the United States Navy. Following her second marriage in 1912 to Kentucky native Harry Jacobs, she returned to farming on a portion of the original Fink estate before relocating her residence to the city of Fresno in 1918.