Jones, Jr., John

Born: 1815-05-09 Kentucky

Died: 1899-07-12

John Jones Jr. was the son of John Jones Sr., who was an early settler in Clary's Grove in Illinois. His sister was Hannah Armstrong. In 1831, he married Lucy Ann Bell in Sangamon County. Jones served as a private in Abraham Lincoln's company during the Black Hawk War but was listed as absent without leave when the company mustered out on May 27, 1832. In September 1839, he left his wife and ran off with Sallie Clary. Lucy Ann sued him for divorce in the Menard County Circuit Court in June 1841 on the grounds of desertion. Jones did not contest the divorce, as he had left the state with Sallie. Jones and Sallie may have stayed out of Illinois until sometime after the death of his father in 1845. Whether or not Sallie and John ever married is not clear, but in 1850 they were living together with two children back home in Menard County, where he was a farmer and owned $6,000 in real property. Sometime after that, the couple moved to Iowa, where they lived the remainder of their lives.

Gravestone, Union Chapel Cemetery, Patterson, IA; Illinois Statewide Marriage Index, Sangamon County, Illinois State Archives, Springfield, IL; History of Menard and Mason Counties, Illinois (Chicago: O. L. Baskin, 1879), 285; Muster Roll of Abraham Lincoln's Company of Mounted Volunteers; Clary v. Clary, Martha L. Benner and Cullom Davis et al., eds., The Law Practice of Abraham Lincoln: Complete Documentary Edition, 2d edition (Springfield: Illinois Historic Preservation Agency, 2009), http://www.lawpracticeofabrahamlincoln.org/Details.aspx?case=141602; U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States (1860), Menard County, IL, 67; U.S. Census Office, Ninth Census of the United States (1870), Madison County, IA, 28; Douglas L. Wilson and Rodney O. Davis, eds., Herndon's Informants: Letters, Interviews, and Statements about Abraham Lincoln (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998), 758.