Houdon Bust of John Paul Jones

Houdon Bust of John Paul Jones JOHN PAUL JONES and HIS ANCESTRY by WILLIAM R. JONES together with HIS LAST DAYS by JOSEPH G. BRANCH ILLUSTRATED JOSEPH G. BRANCH PUBLISHING COMPANY CHICAGO Copyright, 1927 By WILLIAM R. JONES and JOSEPH G. BRANCH CONTENTS Page FORWAR,D ••.....•..•..•••••.••.•..•..•.•••.. vii PART ONE •.....•.•.••......••....•.•..•..•..• . 1· John Paul Jones and His Ancestry PART TWO .•...•.••....•.•..•••...•. ·.•••••• . 195 The Last Days of John Paul Jones ADDRESS OF PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT ...••...• 231 ADDRESS OF GENERAL HORACE PORTER .••.. 237 EXTRACT FROM BOOK ..........•.••........•. 245_ "Memoirs of a Southern Woman" BIBLIOGRAPHY ..· ••........•.•...•..••..•.•. 256 ILLUSTRATIONS ·HOUDON BUST OF JOHN PAUL JONES ...... Frontis HELMY WEISSERICH ....••.......••.•....•... vi ALLEN JONES, JOSEPH HEWES, WYLEY JONES.246 RUINS OF "THE GROVE" ........••........... 248 THE HOME OF WYLEY JONES .•...•.....•..•. 250 THE JONES-BRANCH COAT OF ARMS ......•.... 254 V HELMY WEISSERICH vi FOREWORD When a small boy> one of the first things the author can remember discussed around the humble fireside, on long winter nights, was of a time in the long ago when there had been a "golden age" revelled in by our ancestors, many of whom were among the greatest personages of the earth; and our present reduced condition was often compared with this former grandeur. It seemed that in times past we had numer ous kings, princes and lords as ancestors, Welsh and Norman, as well as D-ane and Frank; and that our best beloved ancestor was a British (Welsh) king known to history as "Cadwalla der the Blessed." It then seemed that after_ a long dearth of noted men in our lines there had appeared an other family hero, a kind of atavism as it were, who had inherited all the mentality and all the vii courage of all his ancestors, together with their learning, and that he had gone out into the world when a boy, from a home as humble as our own, and made his fame to encompass the earth. As time passed, this hero came to be re vealed to the writer as John Paul Jones, the man wno during the American Revolution had ~aptured one of the greatest vessels in the En glish Navy, with a rotten oid ship that had been given an almost unpronounceable French name; ana that this was but one of the numerous things he had done to shed luster on the family name. Was told that this hero had an American born .ancestor named Cadwallader Jones, the same name as that of four paternal grand fathers of the writer; and that Paul's line and one branch of our line met in one man in Wales, who died some time a~ound the year of 1600, and that at least one of the family lines of this old ancestor went back into antiquity. He fur ther heard that London was founded by "our people" before the days of Julius Caesar; all of which sounded )ike a fairy tale; but he now knows that the head of the family, Elder John Jones, was not a man given to roma.ncing. Elder Jones was born in 1817, being the first white m~n born in Wayne County, Illinois. He had acquired in the wilderness an education that viii would shame many~ college graduate of today; was a successful school teacher, a farmer, and an elder in the l\'Iissionary Baptist. Church. He had several paternal a~cestors named, successively, Cadwallader Jones. His line and Paul Jones~ line met, as the writer remembers, in Lewis of Wales. Our family, it seems to the writer, has had every facility for handing down a long and ac curate tradition, especially when there was such a character in the family as was John Paul Jones. After ten years of earnest research, and the expenditure.of a considerable sum of money, the writer believes, and has to a great extent con firmed, all that is related in this book. While there may be some inaccuracy, it is due to the delay in writing the book; but almost every tradition and event related is practically sub stantiated by history, or by private papers to which the author has had access. It should be remembered that it was a long time after the death of Paul Jones before any American undertook to write a history of him. It should also be remembered that the authors of such books and histories did not live near any of Paul Jones' relatives; and that most of their information was obtained from what the first Scotch historian had written concerning him. It should further be remembered that the ix sisters of Paul Jones would give no information concerning his genealogy, for reasons which the author will later. explain. _ The father of Elder John Jones was Lieu tenant Colonel Cadwallader Jones, born in Ken tucky, 1792, the very year that Paul Jones died in Paris. Colonel Jones' mother, Martha Pitts Jones, had, as an orphan, been reared in the home of the first Cadwallader Jones of North Carolina, who was great grand father of Elder John Jones; this first North Carolina ancestor, and his wife, .,,. were older than Paul; both were related to him, and to each other. While they were not closely related to each other, the wife of this Pennsylvania Cadwallader Jones was a very near cousin to Paul. Martha Pitts married the son of the above Cadwallader Jones. Her husband was the Cadwallader Jones that was born in 1760, in North Carolina. Martha was about seventeen years old when Paul Jones captured the Serapis, while her husband was nineteen. All four of the above persons knew well the history of Paul Jones' family, they ·hav ing learned same in part from Paul Jones him: self. This family history was no doubt often discussed, especially after Paul became one of the most famous men in all the world. Martha and her husband removed to Ken tucky about the year 1785. The husband died in that state near- Hopkinsville, in 1801; but she X continued to relate the tradition of Paul's kin ship with her husband's line for seventy-five years after Paul's capture of the Serapis. She took the Jones' children, six in number, and re moved to Gibson county, Indiana, in the year 1809. Several years later, together with her son, Cadwallader, and her daughter, Martha Warrick, she removed to Illinois, where the old lady died in 1854, at the age of 92. Elder Jones who was 37 years old at the time of her death; lived in the same house with her for many years. The author was born only seven years after this old lady ceased telling the family tradition of Paul Jones to the family. And yet five years before the death of her husband's brother, Ben jamin, in Bartholemew County, Indiana. Her tradition and the tradition of her sons and grandsons is now widely known and ac cepted as authentic in the states of Indiana, Ill inois, Iowa, and in other states to which mem bers of the family have emigrated. Until the writer was twenty-five. years old,_ and left for a home in the South, he often heard of this tradition from numerous kinsmen that had received it direct from the old lady herself. The author only regrets that he has not remem bered it as accurately as he heard it, and that he did not commit same to writing; but he remem bers many of the most important features, and hopes that he may be able to add something xi worth while to what has been heretofore writ ten concerning the remarkable career of "The man of Mystery," Admiral John Paul Jones. Traditions. live longer among people in the wilderness than elsewhere; and it is for this reason that the author has so much valuable in formation· from the descendants of his people. The historian, Gilbert Stone, says that many We~sh families have been known to keep an ac curate family tradition through seven or eight generations. The author hopes that his read ers, upon being convinced of the reliability of the traditions related by him, will be especially interested in the genealogy of the distinguished ancestors of Paul Jones. He also hopes that the brief and fragmentary history of- the peo ples that inhabited what is now Great Britain, in past centuries,-the Welsh, Scotch, Irish and Anglo-Saxons,-will interest, if it does not ed ify the reader. When Paul Jones, in 1773, reached the Rap pahannock, where his first American born an cestor, Cadwallader Jones, had conquered an empire from the Indians, an hundred years be fore, extending from the Rappahannock Falls westward, there was not a single descendant of his ancestor bearing the name of Jones, so far as the writer knows, in all America; but by this time the descendants of the uncles, brothers, nieces, nephews, and cousins, of his Virginia xii born ancestor, were legion; as Paul Jones had distant kinsmen in almost every American Col ony, some of whom helped to secure his place in the Navy. Many, very many, ~ad served in the French and Indian wars, and afterward in the Revolution. There are hundreds of thousands of distant cousins of Paul Jones living in America today; most of whom do not know of their relation ship; but all of them have the same old and dis tinguished ancestry. Some of these bear the name of Jones; many do not, although they are as closely related. The Author. xiii JOHN PAUL JONES and HIS ANCESTRY Much has been written about John Paul Jones, America's first Admiral and greatest sea captain.

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