Indian Wars and Pioneers of Texas Page: 395 of 894
762 p., [172] leaves of plates : ill., ports. ; 30 cm.View a full description of this book.
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332
INDIAN WARS AND PIONEERS OF TEXAS.
father's side his ancestry is traced to Ireland, possibly
more remotely to Wales. His mother's people
were Scotch. Theophilus Jones, his paternal
grandfather, was born in Dublin, Ireland, somewhere
near the middle of the last century; emigrated
thence with his wife and an infant son
to America in 1774, stopping for a time at
Charleston, S. C. There his wife died, after
which event he went to Wilmington, Del., where,
on May 4th, 1775, he married Miss Mary Eccles,
daughter of John and Mary Eccles, and settled
himself at his trade as a cabinetmaker. He
was a skillful workman and in time became a man
of some means; afterwards abandoned cabinetmaking
and engaged in trade with the West Indies
which he followed with profit until his death on the
island of St. Kitts, West Indies, about the beginning
of the present century. In addition to the
son by the first marriage referred to, he left surviving
him three sons and two daughters by his
second marriage, namely, Mary McCorkle, John,
Theophilus, Isabella Anderson, and George. The
youngest of these, George Jones. was the father
of John M., of this article. George Jones was
born in Wilmington, Del., March 1, 1784. He
married Jane Ochiltree, of Wilmington, January
28, 1811, and had issue two sons and
three daughters: Mary Jane, John Maxwell, Elizabeth
Ann, George Crowe and Isabella. Mr. Jones'
wife died in 1821, and he later married Anna M.
Alexander McMullen, daughter of Dr. Archibald
Alexander and widow of A. McMullen, by whom he
had a daughter and son, Henrietta Ord and Archibald
Alexander, the latter dying in infancy. The
senior Mr. Jones, father of John M., was a man of
superior ability as a financier and occupied a prominent
place in Wilmington fgr many years. He
was taught the trade of watchmaking by his father,
but later gave this up for the profession of dentistry
and, after having accumulated some means, devoted
much of his attention to general business
pursuits and the purchase and sale of Wilmington
property and the building of workingmen's homes.
For twenty-five years he was president of the
Delaware Fire Insurance Company, was one of the
originators of the Wilmington Savings Fund and
remained one of its directors as long as he lived,
was a director of the Bank of Wilmington and
Brandywine, since nationalized and still in existence,
one of the founders of Friendship Fire Engine
Company, the oldest organization of the kind in
Wilmington, and was a member of Hanover Street
Presbyterian church, in which for fifty years he was
an elder. His death occurred at Wilmington, August
15, 1867.George Jones was a man of rare intelligence and
thrift and a man of advanced ideas on education.
He gave his children the very best of educations,
his younger son George graduating from Princeton
College in 1838. On his mother's side John M.
Jones was dirctly descended from revolutionary
sires, his greht-grandfather, John Waugh, having
been with Gen. Washington at Valley Forge during
the terrible winter of 1776.
From such ancestry the subject of this memoir
sprung and, surrounded by scenes of commercial
thrift and in an air strongly impregnated with
morality and religious feeling, his boyhood and
early youth were passed. He was born at Wilmington,
Del., October 8, 1814, and educated in the
schools of that place and at Bloomfield, N. J., laying
aside his books at about the age of eighteen to
take up the trade of a jeweleil, which he mastered
under his father. His father offered to send him to
Princeton along with his brother George but he declined,
having already a good education and being
desirous of striking out for himself into active business
life. In the fall of 1836, having been taken
with a severe attack of inflammatory rheumatism in
Philadelphia, where he had been clerking for a
year in the jewelry house of Edward P. Lescure, and
as his physician recommended him to take a sea
voyage, he determined to sail on a vessel then
bound for New Orleans. Through the efforts of his
father, his employer, and others, he took with him
some twenty letters of introduction to prominent
merchants in New Orleans, Natchez and Vicksburg.
These letters spoke of him in the highest terms.
His employer, Edward P. Lescure, wrote as
follows : "PHILADELPHIA,
NOV. 1st, 1836.
"The bearer, Mr. John M. Jones, has been in
my employ for the last twelve months and I take
pleasure in bearing testimony to his integrity,
sobriety, energy, good disposition and gentlemanly
deportment."
On crutches he boarded his vessel, taking with him
his father's gift of his own warm cloak and a hundred
dollars in money, and in due course of time
reached his destination, much improved in health.
Having brought with him a letter of introduction to
Hyde
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Brown, John Henry. Indian Wars and Pioneers of Texas, book, 1880~; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth6725/m1/395/: accessed April 19, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Special Collections.