Jacob Frankln Ensor was born in Baltimore county Maryland and moved to Sam's Creek, Carroll county, now part of Frederick county Maryland. He attended New Windsor College in Maryland and Bryant Sadler Business College in Baltimore Maryland.
At 21 years of age, in 1881, he came to the Kansas City area known as Mission, Kansas where his uncle, Abraham Ensor lived. Jacob was a bookkeeper for the Schutte Lumber Co and the Brown Book & Stationary Co in Kansas City. He disliked the city life, took the teacher's exam and taught for a number of years in the Rossville area around Topeka Kansas.
After several trips back to Maryland, he taught school there and worked as a clerk and bookkeeper in stores. Once he was a clerk for Frank Devilbiss, Ida Devilbiss' brother. In 1896 he returned to Kansas and started farming for himself on the 160 acre Patrick Farm, around 87th and Metcalf.
Ida Hicks Devilbiss was born in 1861 in Carroll county Maryland near New Windsor on Sam's Creek. Ida's mother died in 1863 and her father remarried. This was the area where American Methodistism began and Ida attended school and church there.
In 1898 Jacob retrned to Maryland and married Ida. They returned to Kansas, farming the Patrick farm for several years before moving to the Coe farm at 91st and Metcalf until 1905. In 1905 they moved to Black Bob land, four miles east of Bonita, Kansas. In 1909 they bought what is now the Ensor Park and Museum from C.C. Holcomb and began a dairy farm.
They had two children, Marshall born in 1899 and Loretta born in 1904. The farm they bought was run down and Jacob built many fences, a cement silo, a dairy barn and made many other improvements. He developed polio in 1911 and was completely bedfast for a time and gradually learned to walk again. Ida hired two men who helped her with the farm during those years. She was a fast and tireless worker, with two small childern, a bedfast husband, six people relying on her for meals, laundry and a farm to manage.
Jacob and Ida operated a divese farm, with a dairy herd of 23 head of cattle. They sold butter and milk by shipping it to town on the railroad and later by automobile. Ida and Marshall raised all the plants for their garden and sold excess to the public. They also had 350 laying hens and sold eggs and fryers.
Thy worked on the farm till Jacob died in 1934. Ida pased in 1941 and Loretta continued to live on the farm, with Marshall's assistance until she died in 1991.