Being
an Account Written about 1893 by His Daughter, Hariet
Jones Goodell, to her Half-Brother, Walter Clyde Jones
of Pilot Grove, to Keokuk then Chicago.
Our father was a man of [indomitable] will, phisical
strength and energy. Of his early childhood and young
manhood I have heard but little. He was the son of
Isaac Jones who was from Harrison Co. Ohio formerly
from Pennsylvania. Our father came from Ohio in 1837
presenting land going 1.25 an acre in Lee County Iowa
at that time. Even Chicago was a small town.
Soon after this he was married to Eleanor Steele. They
lived on this land, it was to be their home. They had
little or no money. All was to be done by hard work. I
have heard people tell of our father building his
house himself with a jack knife and a plane. he had
entered some timber land from which he hauled much of
the timber for the house. It was a good one in every
respect, comfortable with six rooms as I remember it.
There were few in our neighborhood so imposing. He
worked hard, too hard. I have heard how he worked his
horses, of which he had some fine ones and oxen too
who did their shares. He had a beautiful team of young
horses matched. He worked them on a threshing machine
all one day. The machine was one of those which was
treaded with horses. How well I remember this machine.
He got up the next morning, one of the horses was
dead, the next morning the other one was dead. This
was a blow to a young man just beginning life on a
farm with everything to make. He would go to the woods
for fire wood - everyone burned wood in those days not
knowing of the coal that was found later in Iowa. He
would drive one wagon with the horses, the oxen
following with another wagon. Two loads of wood would
be cut and hauled home instead of one as other people
did.
My earliest recollections of our home I think I was 8
or ten years old [1853 or 1855]. The family consisted
of father, mother, my sister and myself, 3 or 4
children dying in infancy.
At this time the post-office was at our house, the
stage run from West Point to Salem carrying passengers
and the mail only two or three times a week. I think
the postage was 25 cts at this time. Our father took
several papers, one being the New
York Ledger which about this time or a little
later [1851–52] printed Uncle
Tom’s Cabin in installments. I read this
story then. Our father’s people living at Salem were
Quakers, and many were the negroes who were helped on
their way to Canada. The feeling between the north and
south even at this time was intense. About this time
our brother Frank was born [abt 1855]. There was
rejoicing in the houshold. Soon after this father
succeeded well in the farming business, having added
many acres to his farm until he had near a section of
land [nearly 640 acres, possibly most of Section 10,
Marion Twp. ?]. He raised many cattle and hogs. I
remember how the price of hogs not being enough to
suit him he killed them himself, 69 large ones, and
packed smoked the meat. When the lard was rendered
there were eight barrels of it, paid him well to do
this. There was much work to this but work never
seemed to bother him.
Having this money he concluded to build a new house on
a more imposing style. This was a brick house having
15 large rooms. There are some things I remember so
plainly about this house They had just finished
putting on the tin roof. Tin roofing was just
beginning to be used then. It was a Sunday afternoon
and windy. My sister and I with our father went to see
the house. We climed to the roof. Father and Emma
walked over it but I, more cautious, contented myself
looking through the hatchway hole. We returned to our
mother and the house. The wind kept blowing. The roof
was blown from the new building. It was shingled then.
Father raised much fruit for many years, apples and
cherries, many hundred bushels of apples each year. As
to cherries, neighbors would come for miles to pick
them on shares. One year we made a barrel of cherry
wine, besides drying and canning. At this time canning
fruit was a very new industry, and the cans used were
tin ones. It was yet to be tried if it would be a
success. Everyone dried for months - dried apples,
dried cherries, dried corn and pumpkin.
There were no railroads in Iowa at this time, traffic
being done by means of the rivers and this reminds me
of the trips our father made to St. Louis each fall on
the steamer to get groceries for the year. The night
before he started he would take from their hiding
place little sacks (like a five cts sack of salt) gold
and silver. We children were allowed to stand and
watch these pieces being counted. The reason money was
kept in this way was people did not have confidence in
the banks. It was the time of wild cat money so many
banks were failing. The next morning he would start on
his trip, taking the boat from Keokuk, returning in a
few days with the provisions with a barrel of sugar
light-brown and dark brown (there being no white sugar
in those days), only loaf, a barrel or two of syrup,
kegs of fish, sacks of coffee. green, there being no
roasted coffee We would roast it ourselves, covering
it after being roasted with a little butter and the
beaten white of an egg and such coffee. We get none
like it today.
We had lived in the new house but a short time when my
mother died [4 Nov 1858], then I was my father’s
housekeeper with the help of a German girl who lived
near us, this I did going to school also and here is
where my father showed how good he was. He took good
care of us, ever kind and helpful. At this time I was
13 ,Emma 10, Frank 4. We lived this way for 6 or 7
years, being at home with the family two years. After
I was married we went to keeping house. Emma was then
father’s housekeeper for a time until he married Sarah
Buffington, your mother. She was a beautiful woman,
made him a good wife. We children all loved her. He
married her in Cincinatti, Ohio. She has told you of
him. He was greatly interested in law and studied the
statutes of Iowa for that until I believe he knew it
by heart. There was a big German settlement near us
[St. Paul. He did their law business for them.**
Postscript
Jonathan Jones was born a Quaker near Freeport,
Harrison County, Ohio, on 12 February 1815. Disowned
by the Quakers as a teenager, he nevertheless moved
with his Quaker parents, Isaac and Mary Millison
Jones, and his six siblings, to Salem, Henry County,
Iowa, probably in the spring of 1840. They were joined
shortly by members of the Buffington, Jackman and
Millison kindred who shared the same origins in Pike
Run Twp., Washington Co., PA. Jonathan soon bought
land and moved to the site of Pilot Grove in Lee
County. About 1843, he married (1) Eleanor Steele
(born about 1820), of currently unproved Ohio
parentage. Hariet describes what their life was like.
They had six children, three surviving infancy. The
three who did not were Abigail 1845 (10 mo 28 ds),
Henrietta 1851 (1 yr 8 mo 2 ds), and William 1853 (6
mo 10 ds). They are buried in the Old Pilot Grove
Cemetery with their mother, the first four interments
there. After Eleanor died in 1858, the year Pilot
Grove was platted, Jonathan married (2) Sarah
Buffington from Cincinnati about 1866. Sarah was his
first cousin once removed (his maternal grandparents
and her paternal great grandparents held in common).
They had three sons, William Harry, Walter Clyde and
(Dr.) George Washington Jones. The family moved to
Keokuk, Iowa, in 1874. Jonathan died there in 1883.
The letter was probably stimulated by a meeting in
Chicago of Hariet J. Goodell, 48, and her nearly
unknown half-brother, Walter Clyde Jones, 22, at the
World’s Columbian Fair in 1893.
**From the unsigned, undated letter written by
Jonathan’s eldest daughter. She often used spaces or
ends of lines to separate sentences, rather than
periods and capital letters; periods and
capitalizations have been added for easier reading.
Transcribed by Nancy Brown Jones with interpolations
by Gair Tourtellot
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