Biography - Lewis Jones
LEWIS G. JONES was born in Roane County, Tenn., September 24, 1837. He is a son of John Jones, who was born in Washington County, Tenn., in 1810. The latter was a son of Lewis Jones, who removed to Tennessee, it is believed, from Virginia. He followed farming most of his life in Tennessee, where he died at an advanced age. He reared a large family, of whom John was one of the older sons. John Jones married Isabella Raulston, of Tennessee, daughter of Moses Raulston, who came from Ireland, and who was a finished scholar. His wife was Mary Denny, of Tennessee, who was left alone with five small children, all of whom she reared.
Lewis G. Jones is one of eighteen children, five of whom died in infancy, and only six of whom arrived at adult age. William was a volunteer in the Thirty-first Illinois Infantry, and was killed in battle in front of Atlanta, July 22, 1864, the same day on which Gen. McPherson was killed. The parents of Lewis G. came to Illinois in 1858 with their team, leaving him and his elder sister in Tennessee. He came on in the fall of 1865, and his sister came in 1875. Lewis G. Jones volunteered to defend the flag of his country in March, 1862, joining the Fifth Tennessee Infantry, and serving as a private soldier all the time he was in the army. He was in some of the principal battles of the war, Chickamauga and Resaca, and in the entire Atlanta campaign, back with Gen. Thomas in pursuit of food to Nashville, at Ft. Fisher, Ft. Anderson, and at Wilmington, N. C. He was married first in 1856, to Louisa Phillips, who bore him five sons and one daughter, and who died in Illinois in 1869, in her thirty-fifth year. Three of the sons died in infancy. The children she left at the time of her death were Samuel A., who died when twenty-seven years of age, leaving a widow and two sons; William I., who died when seventeen years of age, and Isabelle, wife of Turner Miller, a farmer of Tunnel Hill Township. Mr. Jones was married the second time, July 16, 1871, to Miss Sarah E. Stroud, daughter of J. C. and Mary (Adams) Stroud.
Our subject removed from Tennessee to Illinois with his ox-team, being thirty days en route. He had but little means, and was at the time an invalid, and had been from the time he came out of the army, where he had lung fever, and was generally broken down. He settled first in Goreville Township, on an eighty-acre farm belonging to his mother. His first farm in Illinois consisted of eighty acres, now a part of his present farm of one hundred and nineteen acres. Mr. Jones was Treasurer of the Township Board and a Commissioner. He is a member of the Odd Fellows' fraternity, and has since the war voted the Republican ticket principally. He carries on for the most part general fanning, growing mostly wheat and corn, and keeps a few horses, cattle, sheep and hogs. He and his present wife buried one son, Oscar, at four years of age. They have six children living, viz.: Viola, a young lady at home; Verrazanna, a young man at home; Cordelia, a young lady in school; Jesse C., a rugged farmer boy; Philip Sheridan and Mary E. While Mr. and Mrs. Jones themselves had but limited education they see the benefit of it, and are doing what they can to educate their children. They are both members of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. The father of Mrs. Jones was a soldier in the War of the Rebellion.
Extracted 23 Apr 2016 from 1893 Biographical Review of Johnson, Massac, Pope, and Hardin Counties, Illinois, pages 211-212.
