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MILES C. JONES
Vol. 3, p. 1152-1153
Book has photo

MILES C. JONES. One of the oldest residents of Eastern Oklahoma is
Miles C. Jones, who for a number of years has been a resident of
Dewey and is now a merchant of that little city and also one of the
county commissioners of Washington County. Mr. Jones, who is not past
three score and ten, claims the unusual distinction of being a native
son of Oklahoma. His father was one of the prominent early
missionaries among the Cherokees, and in fact the family have lived
in old Indian Territory since the removal of the Indian tribes west
of the Mississippi.

Miles C. JONES was born in what is now Adair County, Oklahoma,
November 30, 1844, a son of Rev. Evan and Pauline (CUNNINGHAM) JONES.
His father was a native of Wales and died at the venerable age of
eighty-four years at Talequah [sic] in the Cherokee Nation in 1873.
He spent his early life in London, England, and had a brief
experience in merchandising there, but abandoned that work early in
life in order to become a Baptist minister. He finally emigrated to
America, locating at Philadelphia, and soon after became a missionary
among the Cherokee Indians in Tennessee and North Carolina. He had
charge of a large party of these Indians when they were removed from
their old home to the Indian Territory, and continued his work as a
missionary among the tribe and about 1835 established a mission in
what is now Adair County near Westville. He was one of the prominent
spiritual leaders of the Cherokees until the Civil war and in 1862
entered the Union army as a chaplain and his services continued until
the close. The Missionary Board then had him take charge of the
Pottawattomie [sic] Mission near Topeka, Kansas, for two years, and
for a time he lived at Chetopa, Kansas. He finally returned to the
Cherokee Nation and labored among those people so far as his strength
would permit until his death. He is one of the men who for his
devoted labors as a missionary among the Indian tribes will always
have a high place in the early history of Indian Territory.

Rev. Evan JONES was first married in London, England, to Elizabeth
LANNIGAN, and she and her four children accompanied him to America.
She was the mother of six children, as follows: Evan, who died as a
young man soon after the family came to Indian Territory; Elizabeth,
who married Doctor PARKS; Samuel, who was killed during the QUANTRELL
raid upon Lawrence, Kansas, during the Civil war; Anna, who married
W. R. LATTA, and both are now deceased; Hannah, who was the first of
these children to be born in America, married Rev. B. H. PEARSON, a
Presbyterian minister who died at Fort Smith, Arkansas, when ninety
years of age; and Rev. John B., who was educated for the Baptist
ministry in New York, labored for many years as a missionary among
the Cherokees, and was said to speak the Cherokee language better
than the natives of that tribe, and his death occurred in Colorado
while seeking health. About 1830, while in Tennessee, Rev. Evan JONES
married Pauline CUNNINGHAM, who died at Talequah, [sic] Oklahoma, in
July, 1876, at the age of sixty-seven. The children of this marriage
were: Pauline D., now deceased, who married Richard BIRD of Little
Rock, Arkansas: Mary L., deceased, who married C. N. SMITH of New
York; Pracilla, who died when about twenty two years of age; Herman
Lincoln, who was third in order of birth, and was killed while
serving as a Confederate soldier; Johanna V., who was the youngest of
the children born in Tennessee, and who died at Tacoma, Washington,
in December, 1914, as the wife of G. H. HARD; Evan, who died in
Indian Territory in 1852 at the age of twelve years; Miles C.; and
Ella P., who is now living at Lawrence, Kansas, as the widow of O. W.
MCCALLISTER.

Miles C. JONES spent his boyhood up to the Civil war on a farm at
the old Baptist Mission in what is now Adair County, and attended a
school taught by a missionary, W. P. UPHAM, from Boston. In 1862 the
family removed to Kansas, and while there he attended the public
schools of Lawrence a few months. In 1864, at the age of twenty, he
enlisted in a Kansas regiment of militia, the Third Kansas Cavalry,
and was with this command on its campaign through Missouri, Kansas
and Arkansas during the fall of 1864. His parents remained at
Lawrence until 1866 and for two years he had practical experience at
the hardware trade. In the spring of 1866 he returned to Indian
Territory and located at Fort Gibson, but after a year went to
Chicago and was a student in a business college in that city for six
months. Returning to Fort Gibson in 1867, he engaged in the hardware
business for himself, and for nearly half a century has been almost
continuously identified with business affairs in Eastern Oklahoma.

In 1868 Mr. Jones married Miss Margaret STEVENS of Schenectady, New
York. After several years in Fort Gibson he sold his hardware store
and became a farmer and stock raiser. It was in 1879 that Mr. JONES
located at what was then called Cotton Valley, now located in
Washington County, Oklahoma. He has thus been a witness of all the
remarkable development that has occurred during the past thirty or
forty years in this section of the state. For a number of years he
continued farming and stock raising, and about 1902 moved to Dewey as
one of the pioneer settlers in that town. For about ten years he was
a grain buyer and shipper, but that business became of less
importance through the development of the oil resources, and Mr.
JONES, like nearly anybody else who had any capital to invest, became
more or less of an oil operator, and lost considerable money in that
way. Since 1911 he has been in the grocery business at Dewey, and now
divides his time between his store and his duties as county
commissioner, to which office he was elected in 1914. Before Oklahoma
became a state he served as treasurer of the Town of Dewey and was
its mayor at the time the territory was admitted to the Union. Mr.
JONES has always been a democrat, and is radical in his adherence to
that party. For four different terms he was elected assessor of
Dewey. He is also owner of a farm, and it is situated in the oil
district, and he has several oil wells on his land. Mr. Jones is a
member of the Baptist Church at Dewey. His father was for forty years
one of the most intimate friends of John ROSS, the famous chief of
the Cherokee Nation. Mr. Jones is affiliated with the Mason order and
with the Loyal Order of Moose. His only child, Eva P., now living at
home, was educated in the School for the Blind in Kansas City and in
spite of her affliction is a young woman of most happy temperament,
keeps in close touch with everything that goes on in Dewey, and often
drives about the country alone.

Typed for OKGenWeb by: Donald E. Conley, 29 October 1998.