Heathcock Genealogy Database - Person Sheet
Heathcock Genealogy Database - Person Sheet
Spouses
Marriage3 Jun 1798, Warren Co SC388
Notes for William Jones
For some time, it was believed that this William Jones was son of Ebenezer Jones, of Daviess Co, Indiana. This myth was perpetuated particularly by Jesse Mattes Jones, a long-time Ebenezer Jones historian, and probably was a conclusion drawn simply from the fact that it is known from family bibles that Ebenezer’s first son was named William, and that there was this William Jones who did live in Daviess Co IN at the same time as Ebenezer. Following is from writings of Jesse Mattes Jones, who wrote to many correspondents:
“William Jones first moved from North Carolina to South Carolina and later joined his father and mother in Indiana.”387
“In 1810 Eb. Jones and his wife Mary (Roten) Jones and 13 of their 15 children migrated to IN. They arrived in IN in the fall of 1810 as indicated by land purchases and deed recordings by the Jones families. Eb. Jones began writing to his two sons Wm. And Lewis Jones in SC telling them of the rich and fertile lands in Southern IN. and in 1816 Wm. And Mary (Johnson) Jones and their six children and Lewis Jones, his brother, and several other families left via wagon train for IN. Some stopped in KY and others went on into IN.”388
At the moment, there is no evidence for the theories of Jesse Mattes Jones regarding a link between William Jones of early 19th century Daviess Co IN and Ebenezer Jones. Following is analysis carried out by Gilbert S. Drendel and Ron Jones after a visit to Washington Co IN in 2003:
“Ron detemined that the William Jones/Joseph Jones clan in Harrison Township are not related to the Ebenezer Jones family. For my part, I did not do anything further on the William Jones family, but I have a couple of observations which support Ron’s view. Eb and his sons who spent time in Daviess County had a number of transactions with one another. We saw, perhaps, 20-25 deeds involving Eb’s family. These sons were Lewis, Vance, Wiley and Vinson. Hullum may have been there briefly. I saw no sign of Enoch. Each of them, including Eb, conveyed land one to the other, although not all of them had transactions with all of the others in the group. However, no one in Eb’s family were involved in any land transactions with William, Joseph, Zachariah, Permenius etc.”
“Eb’s family had no land transactions or apparent contact with any people in Harrison County. They dealt with Washington area and township issues only even as road viewers, tax listers, county projects etc.
“In reviewing probate records (which were sparse), I noticed a couple of estates dealing with the William/Joseph people. Where Mattes Jones placed all of them as sons or grandsons of William (Eb’s son), the probate heirships revealed they were not brothers. That is Zachariah, Permenius, William W., William, Joseph etc were not siblings. Some were, but two or three separate family units were living near the Aikman cemetery; not one family as Mattes suggested.
“All of this information leaves the Eb Jones descendants to wonder what did happen to William. Somewhere in the welter of print I have seen on this family, it was said that everyone in the family lived to an old age except Jesse and William. That is certainly true about Jesse; perhaps that is part of the answer to what happened to William. None of this addresses the comment in the Myers book that William and Lewis Jones were early settlers in Harrison Township who came from SC. We have been led to believe that Lewis went to SC to help William (is this from Mattes also?). Maybe the Myers comment is from Mattes also!”389
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Note added by Clayton Heathcock, 24 February 2017: In his book “Footprints on the Frontier”, published in 2008, Gilbert X. Drendel carried out a detailed evaluation of all of the published speculation about William Jones and came to the conclusion that William Jones was indeed the first son of Ebenezer and Mary Jones, that he died before the age of 6, and that the William Jones who moved from South Carolina to Daviess Co IN was unrelated to Ebenezer Jones.390 Following is Gilbert’s final conclusion, supported by a previously unrecognized census evidence:
“We believe there has been so much confusion and difficulty in tracing Ebenezer and Mary's first child, William, because there was no adult William. He never married. He never grew past early childhpod. We believe he died before 1790—before he was six years old.
“One of the primary reasons for the first census taken by our new nation in 1790 was to identify young males who might be available in the event of another military conflict. The Revolutionary War had ended only seven years earlier. England was still the most powerful country in the world and was still eager to dominate its former colony as seen by the War of 1812 a few years later. Spain owned Florida and still controlled Mexico and America's future southwest, which placed them in a possible adversarial position. Spain had not allied with the American colonies in the Revolutjonary War. France controJled vast land areas west of the thirteen colonies and had long-established and lucrative business interests to protect. France had come to our aid in the War, but the French Revolutipn, which began in July 1789, made them an uncertain ally and a potential foe. For these reasons, the census takers were directed to take particular care to get accurate information on all males, particularly males under the age of sixteen, who were potential soldiers should war occur.
“The census date for 1790 was August 2, the 1st Monday in August. As of that date Ebenezer and Mary's first five children had been born. They wete all boys. They were:
William born June 10, 1784
Enoch born October 23, 1785
Smith born November 13, 1786
Vance born April 23, 1788
Lewis born June 23, 1790
“The 1790 censs report of the Ebenezer Jones family listed one male over age sixteen, who was Ebenezer, and four males under sixteen. We have firm proof that Enoch, Smith, Vance and Lewis lived to adulthood. These four boys were the four males under age sixteen living in Mary and Ebenezer's household in August 1790. One tjf the first five children was missing. The missing child had to be William. It is no wonder that no descendants of North Carolina William Jones have ever appared. It is no wonder that Jesse Mattes Jones, Jr., in trying to flesh out the lives of the children of Ebenezer and Mary, made a mistake when he believed he had found the family of their first-born son. There was no William Jones to research. He died as a child.”
“William Jones first moved from North Carolina to South Carolina and later joined his father and mother in Indiana.”387
“In 1810 Eb. Jones and his wife Mary (Roten) Jones and 13 of their 15 children migrated to IN. They arrived in IN in the fall of 1810 as indicated by land purchases and deed recordings by the Jones families. Eb. Jones began writing to his two sons Wm. And Lewis Jones in SC telling them of the rich and fertile lands in Southern IN. and in 1816 Wm. And Mary (Johnson) Jones and their six children and Lewis Jones, his brother, and several other families left via wagon train for IN. Some stopped in KY and others went on into IN.”388
At the moment, there is no evidence for the theories of Jesse Mattes Jones regarding a link between William Jones of early 19th century Daviess Co IN and Ebenezer Jones. Following is analysis carried out by Gilbert S. Drendel and Ron Jones after a visit to Washington Co IN in 2003:
“Ron detemined that the William Jones/Joseph Jones clan in Harrison Township are not related to the Ebenezer Jones family. For my part, I did not do anything further on the William Jones family, but I have a couple of observations which support Ron’s view. Eb and his sons who spent time in Daviess County had a number of transactions with one another. We saw, perhaps, 20-25 deeds involving Eb’s family. These sons were Lewis, Vance, Wiley and Vinson. Hullum may have been there briefly. I saw no sign of Enoch. Each of them, including Eb, conveyed land one to the other, although not all of them had transactions with all of the others in the group. However, no one in Eb’s family were involved in any land transactions with William, Joseph, Zachariah, Permenius etc.”
“Eb’s family had no land transactions or apparent contact with any people in Harrison County. They dealt with Washington area and township issues only even as road viewers, tax listers, county projects etc.
“In reviewing probate records (which were sparse), I noticed a couple of estates dealing with the William/Joseph people. Where Mattes Jones placed all of them as sons or grandsons of William (Eb’s son), the probate heirships revealed they were not brothers. That is Zachariah, Permenius, William W., William, Joseph etc were not siblings. Some were, but two or three separate family units were living near the Aikman cemetery; not one family as Mattes suggested.
“All of this information leaves the Eb Jones descendants to wonder what did happen to William. Somewhere in the welter of print I have seen on this family, it was said that everyone in the family lived to an old age except Jesse and William. That is certainly true about Jesse; perhaps that is part of the answer to what happened to William. None of this addresses the comment in the Myers book that William and Lewis Jones were early settlers in Harrison Township who came from SC. We have been led to believe that Lewis went to SC to help William (is this from Mattes also?). Maybe the Myers comment is from Mattes also!”389
***************************
Note added by Clayton Heathcock, 24 February 2017: In his book “Footprints on the Frontier”, published in 2008, Gilbert X. Drendel carried out a detailed evaluation of all of the published speculation about William Jones and came to the conclusion that William Jones was indeed the first son of Ebenezer and Mary Jones, that he died before the age of 6, and that the William Jones who moved from South Carolina to Daviess Co IN was unrelated to Ebenezer Jones.390 Following is Gilbert’s final conclusion, supported by a previously unrecognized census evidence:
“We believe there has been so much confusion and difficulty in tracing Ebenezer and Mary's first child, William, because there was no adult William. He never married. He never grew past early childhpod. We believe he died before 1790—before he was six years old.
“One of the primary reasons for the first census taken by our new nation in 1790 was to identify young males who might be available in the event of another military conflict. The Revolutionary War had ended only seven years earlier. England was still the most powerful country in the world and was still eager to dominate its former colony as seen by the War of 1812 a few years later. Spain owned Florida and still controlled Mexico and America's future southwest, which placed them in a possible adversarial position. Spain had not allied with the American colonies in the Revolutjonary War. France controJled vast land areas west of the thirteen colonies and had long-established and lucrative business interests to protect. France had come to our aid in the War, but the French Revolutipn, which began in July 1789, made them an uncertain ally and a potential foe. For these reasons, the census takers were directed to take particular care to get accurate information on all males, particularly males under the age of sixteen, who were potential soldiers should war occur.
“The census date for 1790 was August 2, the 1st Monday in August. As of that date Ebenezer and Mary's first five children had been born. They wete all boys. They were:
William born June 10, 1784
Enoch born October 23, 1785
Smith born November 13, 1786
Vance born April 23, 1788
Lewis born June 23, 1790
“The 1790 censs report of the Ebenezer Jones family listed one male over age sixteen, who was Ebenezer, and four males under sixteen. We have firm proof that Enoch, Smith, Vance and Lewis lived to adulthood. These four boys were the four males under age sixteen living in Mary and Ebenezer's household in August 1790. One tjf the first five children was missing. The missing child had to be William. It is no wonder that no descendants of North Carolina William Jones have ever appared. It is no wonder that Jesse Mattes Jones, Jr., in trying to flesh out the lives of the children of Ebenezer and Mary, made a mistake when he believed he had found the family of their first-born son. There was no William Jones to research. He died as a child.”
Research notes for William Jones
The following notations were supplied by Scott Jones, a descendant of this William Jones.391
10/16/2007
Found that I had the children of Joseph and William mixed up. On this date I switched them to identify William Jones, born in South Carolina and died 4/27/1950 as my direct decendent.
My records also indicated William to have died in 1840, which was also changed
"In reviewing probate records (which were sparse), I noticed a couple of estates dealing with the William/Joseph people. Where Mattes Jones placed all of them as sons or grandsons of William (Eb?s son), the probate heirships revealed they were not brothers. That is Zachariah, Permenius, William W., William, Joseph etc were not siblings. Some were, but two or three separate family units were living near the Aikman cemetery; not one family as Mattes suggested."
10/16/2007
HARRISON TOWNSHIP was originally divided between Veal and Reeve Townships, but was in 1840 created by the board of county commissioners. The territory now within its limits was settled almost as early as any other portion of Daviess County. It is not easy at this late day to ascertain the exact date of the arrival of all the early settlers, and the dates given below are in some cases only approximations. Among the first to arrive were William and Lewis Jones, who came from South Carolina in 1812; Christopher and Jeremiah Gregory, also from South Carolina; Daniel .Jackson, from New York; Tolliver Colbert, who was born in Virginia, and who lived a short time in Kentucky, and also in Ohio, before reaching Daviess County, in 1819; Samuel Comer was among the earliest, from South Carolina; James Allen was from Kentucky, and John Edwards from South Carolina, both arriving in 1820; Green, John and Thomas McCafferty came about 1820. A son of Green McCafferty, John, is nowkeeping a general store in Washington. John Ellis came from North Carolina ; Joseph and William Jones came from South Carolina, and were among the first; John, Thomas and Franklin settled south of the present site of the Ebenezer Methodist Episcopal Church; Campbell Vance and John C. Steen were also early comers, from South Carolina; Jeremiah Allen came from Kentucky in about 1822. (http://www.millersofwashingtoncounty.org/Daviess/Chapter-3.html)
From History of Knox & Davies Counties Indiana; Published by The Goodspeed Publishing Co., Chicago, IL; 1886
Page 783 states that Thomas H. Jones died in 1876.
Stated that Thomas H. Jones was father of Joseph Jones (Dates of Thomes didn't make sense)
Thomas H. Jones 1824 - 1876
Ruth E. Freeland 1832 -1882
Married, October 10, 1849
Reeve Twp., Daviess Co., IN
Pg. 864
William W. Jones was born in Davies County, Indiana on August 4, 1832, son of Joseph and Hannah (Johnson) Jones. The family are of Welsh descent. The father [Joseph] was from near Charleston, South Carolina, in 1801 and the mother in Kentucky in 1798. They both died in the county, the father in 1866 and the mother in 1862. Joseph [J.] Jones came to what is now Davies County in 1816 with his father, whom was also a native Carolinian and a slave holder in that state. He [Joseph'sFather] died in Davies County in 1840. William W. Jones, our subjectattended the common schools and farmed until 1864, when he enlisted in Company E., 44th Indiana Volunteer Infantry, and served about one year, when he was honorably discharged. He [had] a brother in the latewar who was shot at the battle of Cedar Mountain and died there. After returning from the army Mr. Jones resumed farming and now owns 300acres of good land. In 1852 he was married to Eliza Collins, a native of Knox County, Indiana, born in 1832. They became the parents of 13 children, five of whom are living, Franklin S., Lydia O., Hannah M., Milton C. and Mason R. Two sons were accidentally drowned in the White River while bathing July 9, 1884. Mr Jones is a Republican and he and his wife are members of the Baptist Church.
Listed in front of book on state map for Daviess County "Schedule Lost"
1820 Federal Census for Indiana, 1966 by The Genealogy Section of the Indiana Historical Society , Indianapolis.
10/16/2007
Found that I had the children of Joseph and William mixed up. On this date I switched them to identify William Jones, born in South Carolina and died 4/27/1950 as my direct decendent.
My records also indicated William to have died in 1840, which was also changed
"In reviewing probate records (which were sparse), I noticed a couple of estates dealing with the William/Joseph people. Where Mattes Jones placed all of them as sons or grandsons of William (Eb?s son), the probate heirships revealed they were not brothers. That is Zachariah, Permenius, William W., William, Joseph etc were not siblings. Some were, but two or three separate family units were living near the Aikman cemetery; not one family as Mattes suggested."
10/16/2007
HARRISON TOWNSHIP was originally divided between Veal and Reeve Townships, but was in 1840 created by the board of county commissioners. The territory now within its limits was settled almost as early as any other portion of Daviess County. It is not easy at this late day to ascertain the exact date of the arrival of all the early settlers, and the dates given below are in some cases only approximations. Among the first to arrive were William and Lewis Jones, who came from South Carolina in 1812; Christopher and Jeremiah Gregory, also from South Carolina; Daniel .Jackson, from New York; Tolliver Colbert, who was born in Virginia, and who lived a short time in Kentucky, and also in Ohio, before reaching Daviess County, in 1819; Samuel Comer was among the earliest, from South Carolina; James Allen was from Kentucky, and John Edwards from South Carolina, both arriving in 1820; Green, John and Thomas McCafferty came about 1820. A son of Green McCafferty, John, is nowkeeping a general store in Washington. John Ellis came from North Carolina ; Joseph and William Jones came from South Carolina, and were among the first; John, Thomas and Franklin settled south of the present site of the Ebenezer Methodist Episcopal Church; Campbell Vance and John C. Steen were also early comers, from South Carolina; Jeremiah Allen came from Kentucky in about 1822. (http://www.millersofwashingtoncounty.org/Daviess/Chapter-3.html)
From History of Knox & Davies Counties Indiana; Published by The Goodspeed Publishing Co., Chicago, IL; 1886
Page 783 states that Thomas H. Jones died in 1876.
Stated that Thomas H. Jones was father of Joseph Jones (Dates of Thomes didn't make sense)
Thomas H. Jones 1824 - 1876
Ruth E. Freeland 1832 -1882
Married, October 10, 1849
Reeve Twp., Daviess Co., IN
Pg. 864
William W. Jones was born in Davies County, Indiana on August 4, 1832, son of Joseph and Hannah (Johnson) Jones. The family are of Welsh descent. The father [Joseph] was from near Charleston, South Carolina, in 1801 and the mother in Kentucky in 1798. They both died in the county, the father in 1866 and the mother in 1862. Joseph [J.] Jones came to what is now Davies County in 1816 with his father, whom was also a native Carolinian and a slave holder in that state. He [Joseph'sFather] died in Davies County in 1840. William W. Jones, our subjectattended the common schools and farmed until 1864, when he enlisted in Company E., 44th Indiana Volunteer Infantry, and served about one year, when he was honorably discharged. He [had] a brother in the latewar who was shot at the battle of Cedar Mountain and died there. After returning from the army Mr. Jones resumed farming and now owns 300acres of good land. In 1852 he was married to Eliza Collins, a native of Knox County, Indiana, born in 1832. They became the parents of 13 children, five of whom are living, Franklin S., Lydia O., Hannah M., Milton C. and Mason R. Two sons were accidentally drowned in the White River while bathing July 9, 1884. Mr Jones is a Republican and he and his wife are members of the Baptist Church.
Listed in front of book on state map for Daviess County "Schedule Lost"
1820 Federal Census for Indiana, 1966 by The Genealogy Section of the Indiana Historical Society , Indianapolis.