Biography - John Jones
JOHN H. JONES, a resident of Goreville Township, Johnson County, was born in Middle Tennessee in 1849. His father, L. M. Jones, is of the same part of Tennessee and is a son of Samuel Jones, of East Tennessee, who was a farmer and reared a large family of children, of whom L. M. Jones was the fourth. The grandfather died aged about seventy. L. M. married Sarah Hall, of West Virginia, and came with her to southern Illinois about 1852, settling first in Massac County. He then removed to Union County and is living there at the present time. His wife died there in 1883, aged fifty-four years, having borne her husband five children, three sons and two daughters, viz: James I., a carpenter living in Missouri, who has a wife and children; John H.; Ruth A., wife of Joseph Walker, of Tunnel Hill Township; William L., a farmer of the same township; and Lovina, wife of Thomas Rushing, also of this township.
The subject of this sketch was reared on the farm, receiving but a limited education. Though his father was a well-to-do farmer and a practicing physician with a practice worth $5,000 per year, and the schoolhouse was nearby, yet his children were kept at work and only learned to read and write. Mr. Jones, seeing the value and even the necessity of education, is giving his children the best educational facilities to be had. He left home in his twenty-second year and was married August 6, 1871, to Mary E. Walker, of Johnson County, a daughter of Sherman and Emily (Graham) Walker. They began life on a forty-acre farm and have now eighty-three acres, where they have resided twelve years. In 1887 they built their present neat, cozy cottage. Their three children are all living, viz: John G., a young man of twenty and a promising student in the district school; Sarah E., eighteen, and Haley A., a young girl of twelve, both in school and making satisfactory progress in their studies. The two elder ones are nearly prepared to teach. Mr. Jones has been a School Trustee of Goreville Township three years. He is an elder in the Cumberland Presbyterian Church.
Our subject is a Democrat in politics, but he favors the temperance cause. He has been a most successful farmer for a young man and carries on mixed farming. His father at sixty-seven years is still active and well, and as he has plenty of means is living in retirement, though he still practices on the call of some of his friends. He, like his son, is a Democrat in politics.
Extracted 16 Dec 2016 by Norma Hass from 1893 Biographical Review of Johnson, Massac, Pope, and Hardin Counties, Illinois, page 535.
