Now how would you like to have Great Great Grandparents and a Great Grandfather that looked like these characters? The first two are Francis Marion and Roxanna Mary Mariah (Eaton) Jones, and the third is their son, Leandor Emory Jones. Francis and Roxanna moved to Wabaunsee County, Kansas in 1869 where he taught school near Alma, Kansas. He had been Superintendent of Schools in Geneva, Van Buren County, Michigan before moving to Kansas. The lady in the dress with a black collar is Roxanna Mary Mariah (Eaton) Jones. Her parents were among the first settlers in Geneva Township, Van Buren County, Michigan, moving there from New York. She was one of his students in school. He would have probably been arrested for something today 🙂
He brought a “courting house” to her house, asked for her hand in marriage, and when her parents agreed, they rode off into the sunset and were married. She was 13—he was 21. How romantic is that!!! They lived in Geneva Township for the first couple of years and then moved to Kansas. I’ve never heard why.
He didn’t stay in the Alma area long, but moved to the northeast corner of Wabaunsee County, where he settled on a small farm near Willard (but in Wabaunsee County.) He raised vegetables in a truck garden and taught at the old stone “Post Rock” school which no longer exists but was two miles east of Willard. He used to walk that two miles every day from his home to teach. He was a delegate to the Populist Party Convention from Wabaunsee County, so he was progressive and interested in helping farm families get out from under the thumb of big railroads. They had a large family, which included my great grandfather, Leander Emory Jones.
Leander was one of those people who marched to a different drummer. He was an “entrepreneur” in a lot of ways. He loved to farm but never quite made it. He had a custom harvesting “rig” with a steam engine, thrashing machine, water wagon, etc. but…it all fell through the wooden trestle bridge over Mill Creek near Strowig’s Mill at Paxico…and that was the end of that. He then “ran” the Paxico Central office with his family for several years before moving to Maple Hill, where he was “the law” for almost 20 years. I can’t imagine him in that role but evidently he was well liked. He played trombone in the Newbury Philharmonic Band and had a little band of his own which played for barn dances all over Wabaunsee County. He also played the fiddle and the piano by ear. He was quite a guy—which I had known him.
He met and married Virginia “Vergia” Hannah Miller, who lived on the Potawatomi Indian Reservation near Delia. I’ve never heard how that happened, but I’ll bet it had something to do with his playing for dances all over the countryside. They lived near Willard until her untimely death in 1901. She was the mother of four children, only two of whom lived. She died giving birth to the youngest of the four. I remember her daughter, my paternal grandmother, Mabel Rachel (Jones) Clark, telling about her funeral and how sad it was for a 10-year-old to see the lid of a coffin closing on a mother and new baby brother everyone was so excited about just the day before. I can’t even imagine!
Leander was called “Lee” or “Deacon” and he decided it would be best for his two little girls, Mabel and Edith, to live which his parents until he got settled. That was a disaster. My grandmother Mabel said that Francis Jones was so mean to them. When they cried over their mother’s death, he whipped them with his belt and told them “life must go on.” Can you imagine it!!
Fortunately, Lee saw how unhappy the girls were and moved them to their other grandparents, William Washington and Hannah (Wykert) Miller. The girls loved living in their log house on the Potawatomi Reservation, and enjoyed all of their new Native American friends and classmates at school. Grandmother said that her Miller grandparents kept several milk cows and sold butter. She said everyone thought Grandmother Miller’s butter was richer and better than any other—but the secret was the yellow food coloring Grandmother Miller added 🙂
Leander married again, this time to Susanna Jeanetta Rinehardt, whose father was a well-to-do farmer in the Maple Hill community. She was postmaster of Maple Hill for many years. My Grandmother Mabel said that her new step mother was kind and loving to she and Edith from the very minute they met. Eventually, Lee and Susanna Jones had their own child, a son, Elmer Emory Jones, whose nickname was “Casey.” He was operating the Paxico Central Office at the time they were married, and she and Mabel and Edith continued to do so until 1913. The years in Paxico were happy years.
My Great Grandfather, Lee Jones, had wide acquaintances in Wabaunsee and surrounding counties by virtue of his job as Maple Hill Marshall, and also because of his music. In 1937, he agree to be a pall bearer for one of his good friends, Alfred E. Herron, the father of longtime Maple Hill Barber, Wilbur “Jack” Herron. My Grandmother, Mabel (Jones) Clark, invited him to stop by the Maple Hill Central office (where she had been chief operator since 1914) and have lunch before going to the funeral. She was fixing one of his favorites, ham and beans with dumplings. He sat down at the table where she had just sat a steaming bowl. He started to tell her how good it was and just fell forward, never to take another breath.
According to accounts in the Alma Signal Enterprise, my Grandfather Jones’ funeral was the largest every held in Maple Hill to that time. There were over 400 spilling onto the lawn of the Maple Hill Community Congregational Church and the procession reached from the church all the way to the Cemetery over 1.5 miles to the west. In keeping with his wishes, the Newbury Philharmonic Band was loaded onto a truck which proceeded Updegraff’s horse drawn hearse, and played “snappy” dance music all the way to the cemetery. My Grandfather had driven the hearse many, many times for Russell Updegraff. My Grandmother never made her ham, beans and dumplings again without telling us that story—and that’s why I remember it so well. I would love to have a big bowl right now!!
And there you have a little more of my history and the history of Maple Hill.
