The Donald Lines Jacobus Award was established in 1972 by the American Society of Genealogists to encourage sound scholarship in genealogical writing. Jacobus promoted a scientific method of ancestor research that replaced reliance on oral tradition and time-honored pedigrees with primary source documentation. It was an approach made possible because of enormous efforts to preserve and index early church records and grave stone inscriptions carried out by patriotic and heraldic societies, government agencies and religious groups (particularly the Mormons) during the very years that Jacobus was starting his work.