I want to start writing more about my life and background. One of the things I want to share is on my family history. Since Saturday’s are typically low-traffic days anyway, I feel like this day is the best for these posts. The first several posts with relate to a family history written in December 1960 by Minnie B. Jones Ussery. This first post will discuss James Addison Jones I’s birth and parentage.

James Addison Jones was born on a farm in Randolph County, North Carolina, on August 20, 1869. He was the third child born to Robert B. Jones and his second wife, Elizabeth Horney Jones. Robert B. Jones was thirty three years old and Elizabeth Horney was eighteen when they were married on June 11, 1857, in Randolph County, N. C. The marriage bond was recorded on June 3 and witnessed.

Robert B. Jones’ first wife was Ruth Winslow. He was seventeen years old when he married her in North Carolina, and he was probably not much older when they moved to Indiana to live. He had five children by Ruth before she died. These were in order of birth, Allen, Elizabeth, Robert, Sarah, and David. After his first wife’s death, Robert B. Jones returned to North Carolina with some of his children. It was not long after this until he married Elizabeth Horney, mother of James Addison Jones.

Robert B. Jones’ father was Hezekiah Jones, a ship carpenter from England, and his mother was Scotch-Irish, but her name is unknown. Robert B. Jones was named Charles by his parents, but he liked to be called “Bob” and he used Robert B. Jones as his legal name.

According to the genealogical chart compiled by Carol McLean, a descendant of Sarah Elizabeth Jones (a sister of Robert B. Jones), Elizabeth Horney Jones and Robert B. Jones had five children. These, listed in order of birth, were John, William, James Addison, Sherman, and Emma. As two children were born after James Addison was born and their mother died in 1872, there is a likely possibility that James Addison was born a year or two before 1869. This is also indicated by the fact that Elizabeth Horney had married Robert B. Jones in 1857 and had given birth to only two children before James Addison was born.

Elizabeth Horney’s birth is recorded as August 21, 1839. She was only eighteen when she married Robert B. Jones and only thirty-two when she died June 15, 1872. Her death is recorded on a tombstone in the local cemetery at Farmer, Randolph County, North Carolina. This cemetery was formerly the churchyard of the Concord Methodist Church.

Robert B. Jones was away from home at least part, if not all, of the time between 1861 and 1865, as he served under “Stonewall” Jackson in the Confederate Army until Jackson was killed and then served under his successor until the end of the Civil War. The war completely impoverished Robert B. Jones and his family. Never well off before the war, he had an even harder time making ends meet after the war. As a tenant farmer he barely eked out a living, with the aid of his children. To make it harder, his second wife died only a few years later, leaving him with five children, three of whom were under four years of age. As he was then only forty-eight years old, he soon took third wife, Sara Kettler, and by her had two children, Cornelia and Alex. A tombstone in the Lexington city cemetery, Davidson County, North Carolina, records the death of Robert B. Jones on May 6, 1902, at the age of seventy-eight.

I’ll likely share more from this family history each Saturday and Sunday.