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I have produced summaries of my
research in the past and added to it as I found new information. The
additions began to make the last document jumbled and sometimes
redundant and I have chosen to try to create a more readable document as
well as add additional information of possible interest.
Our Jones family began to show
up in the Lynchburg, Virginia area about the time of the American
Revolution. Nathan and Elizabeth Jones were both born in the mid 1770’s
in the Lynchburg area. Lynchburg in the mid 1770’s was on the edge of
the frontier and the government structure was not well developed yet.
Nathan and Elizabeth had two
sons, one of which was Pleasant Ferguson Jones who was born about 1811
or 1812 in the Lynchburg area. He was our great great grandfather. He
showed up again when he married Oney or Oma Henderson in Halifax County,
Virginia in 1836. They had five children including our great
grandfather, Henry Barkstill Jones, who was born in Virginia in 1837.
Three of the children were born in Virginia and the last two were born
in Tennessee. Henry Barkstill was the only son. All of the other
children were girls.
Pleasant Ferguson Jones is
credited as being the founder of Jonesville, Tennessee. He and his
family moved to East Tennessee about 1844 from Halifax, Virginia.
Halifax County and the Lynchburg area were primary jumping off spots for
pioneer families to leave Virginia for the West. A lot of land had
become available from the removal of the tribes like the Cherokee and
was a magnet for pioneering types to move west and start new farms.
Jonesville is in Roane County, Tennessee which is southwest of Knoxville
between Harriman in Roane County and Oak Ridge in Anderson County. P.F.
as Pleasant Ferguson was often called, was a farmer and owned much of
the land in the area. There is no record of his being a politically
prominent person in the area. He was a successful farmer who lived
until 1904 when he died in the Jonesville community. He did do one
thing that was documented. He was a private in the Third East Tennessee
Volunteer Infantry Regiment on the Union side during the Civil War. He
was over 50 years old when he went to war in 1862, which was unusual.
The Third Infantry Regiment was primarily in the Cumberland Gap between
Virginia and Kentucky in 1862 and fought in the Big Creek Gap battle in
June 1862. There is an interesting point that the date that P.F. and
Henry Barkstill “deserted” the union army was August 17, 1862, which was
the date of the London battle where the union got mauled by the
confederates in London, Kentucky. A number of Third East Tennessee
Infantry union soldiers were captured by the confederates. They may
have been released to go home if they agreed not to fight anymore for
the Union. It is documented that P.F. and Henry Barkstill were never
perceived as “deserters” and were in good standing after the civil war.
There is also the theory that Mary Ann was pregnant with Henry Rufus
Jones and that had been a factor in their desertion. My guess is that
they were captured and released to return home to East Tennessee.
Henry Barkstill Jones, our great
grandfather, was a very prominent person in East Tennessee. He was a
Methodist Minister with a circuit in East Tennessee. He was born in
1837 and died in 1932, just three days before his 95th
birthday. He was born in Halifax, Virginia and moved to East Tennessee
as a child in the 1840’s. He married Mary Ann Hudson in 1860. They had
seven children together before Mary Ann died in 1887. Henry remarried
Mattie C. Mabery on September 19th, 1888 and they had two
children.
He did fight in the Civil War
like his father. He was a second lieutenant in Company A of the 17th
Tennessee Cavalry on the Union side. He also “deserted” August 17,
1862, like his Dad. He was in good standing with the government after
the war so there was no serious problem with his going home to East
Tennessee, which was under Confederate control in 1862. The Union army
did not conquer East Tennessee until 1863.
He was a Mason for 63 years and
appeared to be very high in the organization. He was a member of the
East Fork Lodge #460. He must have joined in 1869 according to my math.
Henry finally died from
complications from a fall from his wagon in 1932 three days before his
95th birthday. He was recognized as one of the oldest people
in East Tennessee. It is reported that some courts and government
offices were closed on the day of his funeral in his memory. The
Masonic lodge was in charge of his funeral arrangements.
Although he was a circuit
preacher, his primary church was the Jonesville Methodist church which
was built on land donated by his father, P.F. Jones in 1893. The church
was a community project and built by the members and neighbors. It did
not get electricity until 1940. It is still in use today although it is
somewhat different than originally constructed.
Of Henry Barkstill’s children,
Robert Milton Jones appeared to be the most successful. He became a
lawyer, judge, and eventually the Chancellor of the Law School at the
University of Tennessee. I read a copy of his speech when he retired
and he was definitely a very eloquent man.
His youngest son from his
marriage to Mary Ann Hudson was Doctor Theodore Jones who was our
grandfather. D.T. was born on June 15th, 1874. He was the
seventh son so he was named Doctor. He married Laura Adaline Long on
October 31, 1895 in
Roane County.
The census listed him as a
farmer on rented land in 1900 and a mail carrier in Harriman, Tennessee
in 1910. He left Harriman and Roane County between 1910 and 1918 and
moved his family to the Chattanooga, Tennessee area where he continued
with the U.S.P.S. until his retirement as the superintendent of the
Alton Park Branch of the U.S.P.S. He was the Minster of the Asbury
Methodist Church which was renamed the Jones Memorial Methodist Church
in East Ridge in his honor.
It was interesting to find out
that he was also a Freemason like his Dad. He was a Past Master of Hill
City Lodge #603 according to one obit but I have not been able to verify
that.
He, Laura, and his only daughter
Mabel are buried in Lomenick Cemetery which is a small cemetery very
near the old Jones Memorial Methodist Church.
Laura Adaline was born on May 8,
1876, and died on August 28, 1947. D.T. or “Doc” was born June 15th,
1874, and died December 7th, 1954. I vaguely remember
grandfather. I do remember Dad going back to Chattanooga for his
funeral on the train from Richmond.
The children in this family
were:
- Mabel Theodora
born in 1897 in Roane County. She died in Chattanooga in 1976. She
had cared for Granddad until his death. She had been a clerk for the
Southern Railway in the 1930’s. I remember her well. She never
married. She was prone to being overweight like granddad. She was a
really nice person and she and Dad were close. Dad looked after her
as she aged until her death. I ended up with two of her cars that
Dad bought from Mabel as “hand me downs”- her 1947 Chevrolet and her
1960 Mercury Comet.
- Henry Thomas was
born February 25th, 1900 in Roane County. He died in the
Miami, Florida area in 1984. My memory was that he was involved in
a dry cleaning establishment. I do not remember if he owned it or
was an employee.
- William M. (Uncle
Bill) was born December 21st, 1902 in Roane County. He
followed his Dad as a U.S.P.S. employee at the Red Bank Branch. I
believe he was the Postmaster before his retirement. He was also a
Methodist minister. I remembered visiting him in the 1980’s when he
was caring for his wife who had Alzheimer’s. He was living in Red
Bank when he died shortly after he had to put her in a nursing home.
- Homer Byron was
born June 20th, 1905, in Harriman in Roane County. He
died in the Melbourne, Florida area in 1995. He was a football
player, in his youth, like Donald, but decided to leave Auburn and
come back to Chattanooga and marry his sweetheart, Virginia. He
worked for a company that did maintenance and repair of appliances
when I remember him.
- Donald Theodore
was born October 7th, 1907, in Roane County. He died in
the Melbourne, Florida area in 1980. After high school, he went to
college at Auburn University where he was a starter on the Auburn
football team. He was an honorable mention all Southern Conference
guard. This was in the early 1930’s when every major college from
Maryland to Texas was a member of the Southern Conference. After
graduation from Auburn, he went in the U.S. Army Air Corp as a
pilot. He flew P-47’s in WWII until he was severely burned pulling
a fellow pilot out of a burning wrecked plane. He stayed in the Air
Corp/Air Force and retired as a full Colonel. He was primarily
based at Wright-Patterson Air Base in Ohio during his career. He
was commander of Patrick Air Force Base and Chief of Staff at Cape
Kennedy when we visited him in Florida in the mid 1960’s. He knew
the astronauts well and he was a hell of a source for a science
project I had in High School.
- John Harvey was
born September 22nd, 1911, in I think Roane County. He
died in 1986 in the Melbourne, Florida area. He had been a
librarian in the Data Processing Department for Pan Am Airlines in
the Hialeah, Florida area when computers were very new and much more
difficult to work with than now. He had been in the Army during
WWII and was posted in India.
- Robert Everett
(Bob) was the baby of the family and our Father or Grandfather. He
was born May 7, 1918, in Chattanooga and died of congestive heart
failure in December of 1996.
Dad was the baby of the family
and was considered “sickly” as a child. He did not play football in
high school like his big brothers. However, he did run track. The term
“sickly” was relative and he was a normal person in most ways. He began
to have heart attacks and strokes in his 50’s and the Doctors found that
he had a leaky heart valve from birth. It was replaced several times
and he lived to be 78 years old.
His strongest suit was that he
was an excellent singer. He began singing in his father’s church and
began to sing at multiple churches in the Chattanooga area. He also
sang with the Chattanooga symphony. When in Richmond, he sang religious
songs on the radio and had his own show according to what he said. He
sang his entire life and enjoyed it a great deal.
When in high school, he was a
sparing partner of his brother John who was a boxer in the Chattanooga
area. After high school, he worked in a mill until WWII.
He applied to the Army Air Corps
like his brother when WWII started but was turned down as a potential
pilot because of his eyes. He joined the Coast Guard where he was a
yeoman. He rose to the rank of Petty Officer First Class. He did his
basic in New Orleans and was posted to West Palm Beach, St. Augustine,
and the LST 71. On the LST, he was the clerk for the Captain and the
Gun Captain of the 40mm anti-aircraft gun on the bow of the ship. The
LST 71 was in the invasion of the Philippines and Okinawa and Dad saw
action against the kamikazes that were after the invasion fleets. Being
the ship’s clerk he had a lot of advantages. He told of being in charge
of liberty passes and he would get double liberties when they were in a
port.
He married Gerlene Noma Hagler,
who he had first met in St. Augustine. She was also in the Coast
Guard. She was stationed in San Francisco while Dad was in the Pacific
and they got married there when Dad’s ship came back to Bremerton,
Washington in 1945.
When they were discharged they
both went to Chattanooga to live with dad’s father and mother. Dad got
a job working for the Southeastern Demurrage and Storage Bureau as a
clerk and worked his way up to Manager which was the highest position in
the organization.
The family lived in Chattanooga
from 1945 to 1950 or 1951, when he was transferred to Richmond, Virginia
for a promotion. We lived in Richmond until 1957, when he was promoted
to Assistant Manager in Atlanta. We moved to Atlanta in 1957 and he and
Mother stayed in the Atlanta area for the rest of their lives.
There were other families that
are part of our family due to marriage.
- The Longs, through
our grandmother, came to Pennsylvania in the 1600’s and migrated to
Virginia and then to Tennessee. They had intermarried with the
Clarks, Boltons, Hammocks, Landrums, Turners, Awockes, Hubbards,
Johnsons, Fultons, Youngs, and numerous other families. All of the
families came from England or Scotland that I have researched. I
have not found any really special stories about them yet.
- Our Great
Grandmother, Mary Ann Hudson is an entirely different story. The
Hudsons were some of the earliest settlers in Virginia and they
intermarried with a number of important familes that lead to us.
The Bowmans, the Smiths, the Berrys from Ireland, the Harrisons
which lead to Lord Thomas Harrison, the first royalty I found in the
family and his grandson, Burr Harrison who had an incredible career
in northern Virginia including being a member of the House of
Burgresses and an ambassador to an Indian tribe after starting off
as an indentured servant and a share cropper and ended up with his
own plantation. The Manleys were aristocracy in Colonial Virginia
and one of Mary Ann Hudson’s grandfathers was Ancil Manley who
fought in the Revolutionary War. Ancil had married Elizabeth Butler
whose father had also fought in the revolution. There are probably
more that I have not documented yet. The Butlers had intermarried
with the Magruders in Maryland who were Scottish aristocracy. We
have MacGregors and Campbells in the line and the MacGregors trace
their ancestry back to Charlemange in France and Scottish
aristocracy. Alexander Magruder was banished to Maryland by the
British after a major conflict in Scotland when the British were
conquering Scotland in the early 1600’s. John Hallowes who also
came to the New World as an indentured servant and prospered in
northern Virginia ties in with us through the Manleys. John
Hallowes was a neighbor of George Washington’s grandfather. I found
very few family relatives whose family had not been in North
American before the 1700’s.
- There are also
some connections to the Jeffersons through Thomas Jefferson’s sister
and even Pocahontas and John Rolfe. Ancestry.com is more confident
of the connection than I am right now. These would have been
through Mary Ann Hudson’s side of the family.
- I did find that
the Ancil Manley and his wife Elizabeth Butler and their relatives
did have slaves. This was the first evidence I have found so far
that some of our ancestors were slave holders.
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