One might think that I tend to dwell on the "seedy or unseemly" side of our family history, but it is not intentional I can assure you and I certainly look at what I present here as far from seedy, it is just how people had to survive during difficult times. What is detailed here and an affair of another Willis Jones relative in Texas do tend to paint an unfair picture of what our ancestral family has experienced over time but I just find the stories interesting and worthy of sharing. I tend to look at any story coming out of the past regarding all branches of the family as just contributing to the overall story fabric of the family regardless of any remote attachment one might feel. Life is what it is and we certainly have no control of what has happened in the past. Some might find this meaningless but some time in the future others might feel very much otherwise. The goal from my perspective is to find and record as much as I possibly can, and the attached story is something that needs to be saved and explained.
The real objective of this posting is to attempt to relate that the Jones family still has roots remaining in Georgia and that not all happened, began and ended with our family line originating in Arkansas with nothing else known of even earlier beginnings. Over time we very well may be able to someday make direct connections with other remote lines in North Carolina. Surely they are there, but to find the actual proof will take time.
The individual Jones distant relative mentioned in the attached newspaper article from the Atlanta Constitution newspaper of February of 1921 happens to be a second cousin to Charles F. Jones Sr., and through that connection certainly a shirt tail relative to all his descendants. The man is Wills A. Jones from the line of Jones's that remained in North Georgia after the Civil War, in the Northeast part of the State near the South Carolina border where first substantial documentation of our ancestors migrations can be found. Much of that portion of the State was carved out of the former lands of the Cherokee Indians after their unjust removal from their ancestral territory to Oklahoma in the first half of the nineteenth century. Our Jones family members of the time witnessed and some even participated to some degree in that tragic story now labeled as the "Trail of Tears" that occurred at the insistence of President Andrew Jackson and his administration.
Just what the level of contact between relatives residing in Georgia, Texas and Arkansas was at the time is not really known but some contact was obviously maintained. One or two family photos taken of our Arkansas Jones family that survived within the belongings of our line were also found in the belongings of some of the Georgia Jones’s and were shared with me proving that they did correspond and were exchanging family photos during the latter part of the 1800’s.
The following photo was found in the old family suitcase filled with pictures from both sides of the family. The photo is of Alfred Hines Jones and his brother Samuel Tate Jones, both living in the Harrison, Arkansas area when the photo was taken probably in the 1870 –1880 time period. This very same photo was forwarded to me by one Nancy Hicks of Atlanta and was passed on down thru her family or other North Georgia Jones descendants.
Adding to our obvious connections to other North Georgia Jones family descendants the following photo of the Alfred Hines Jones family of Harrison, Arkansas was also passed on down thru some vague but obviously family members and also shared with me by Nancy Hicks. This photo did not survive within our cache of photos. Based on the youngest child Ruth having been born in 1894 the year is probably 1895 – 1896. The oldest daughter Mary Lou in the back row was probably the surrogate mother to the young children since her step-mother, Martha Elizabeth Moulder, second wife of A.H. Jones had died shortly after the birth of Ruth in 1894. The other stepdaughter, Esther Almira Jones had married and left Harrison in early 1895. She died quite young in Renton, Washington in 1901, apparently the very first member of the family to step foot in Puget Sound country.
The given name Willis in the Jones line extends into lines of three Jones brothers that migrated into Georgia in the early 1800’s from the Northwestern part of South Carolina in present day Anderson County, very near the Georgia border. There was a total of five brothers known of and only the three, Samuel, William and John Calvin Jones have left any trace of their existence that can be followed up to current times. The migrations of the times seemed to be of rather short distances as men and families would establish in new areas and raise their families. Our particular ancestor, one of the three brothers, Samuel Jones, moved farther west in Georgia two more times in his life to the far western side of the State. One brother, William and his descendants remained in place, in what is now Lumpkin County, Georgia and brother John Calvin is a difficult migration story to follow but for the most part after some confusing movements prior to and during the Civil War (he was of Northern sympathies) he and his descendants ended up in Gordon County, Georgia to the Northwest of Atlanta. Gordon County is where our Great Grandfather Samuel died in 1870 where he had settled after the Civil War following the loss of his land further North in Georgia near the Chattanooga Battlefield.
But the Willis Jones focused on in the attached newspaper article is from the area of original family settling, the Northeast part of the state where it seems there are still distant relatives well established there even today. At this point I cannot be certain if the Jones surname has survived to current generations however, but through marriages the area is probably well represented with various descendants. As the article suggests the area was a popular area for the making of moonshine liquor over the years and to some degree it may be so even today. But this Willis Jones died protecting his source of income which many families in the area did as well in order to support their families when the times demanded such activity.
I made a brief internet contact two years ago with a descendant in the Atlanta area that had studied and researched the Jones line quite extensively and she is the one that discovered the connection of the current descendants back to the original three brothers. She diligently followed up on many sources in Georgia and South Carolina and eventually was able to tie her ancestor John Calvin’s line in Gordon County to William and his descendants in Lumpkin County. This connection then easily led to the connection to our Samuel Jones and what can now be found online primarily at Ancestry.com presents some fairly well documented family lines that we most certainly are connected to. This researcher hinted at the involvement in the moonshine business of some Jones descendants over time and just recently another descendant found and posted the attached article to Ancestry.com and what is attached here is copied from that posting. This tends to definitely prove out what the lady had hinted at in some of our correspondence.
But the story is probably not the only such story to come out of that part of Georgia but it is definitely part of the fabric of what I try to pursue.
