BIOGRAPHY: George W. Jones
From the A.T. Andreas Illustrated Historical Atlas of the State of Iowa, 1875

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General GEORGE W. JONES. The life and public service of this 
distinguished citizen of Iowa and intimately interwoven with the history of 
the country from a period dating back to before the organization of the 
Territory of Wisconsin to the expiration of his last term of service in the 
Senate of the United States on the 4th of March, 1859. 
 
The father of the subject of this sketch was John Rice Jones, a native of 
Merionethshire, Wales, who, after graduating at Oxford University and at 
the Medical and Law Schools, came to Philadelphia about the close of 
the Revolutionary War, and engaged in the practice of law; thence he 
removed to Vincennes, Indiana, and became eminent in his profession. 
He was a man of fine abilities and a ripe scholar, having acquired a 
thorough knowledge of the Greek, Latin, Spanish and English languages, 
as well as of the mathematics and other branches of learning. He 
participated in the early wars of the country, for which he received 
patents of land from the United States. He subsequently removed to 
Missouri, where he was a member of the convention that framed the 
Constitution of that State in 1819-20, under which he was appointed 
Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and held the office till the time of his 
death in St. Louis on the 10th of February, 1824. 
 
The mother of General George W. Jones was of German descent, born 
in Pennsylvania, a lady of highly cultivated mind, beings able toconverse 
and write correctly and fluently in the French, German and English 
languages. 
 
Judge Jones had six sons, a brief record of whom we proceed to give as 
follows: 
 
RICE JONES, the eldest, was a physician and a lawyer, and eminent in 
both professions at the time of his assassination by a political rival; John 
Rice Jones, Jr., the second son, served under Colonel Henry Dodge in 
the war of 1812, and was subsequently twice appointed Postmaster 
General of the Republic of Texas; General Augustus Jones, the third 
son, served under Colonel Dodge at the age of sixteen, and was for nine 
years Marshal of Missouri and a captain in the Mexican war; Myers F. 
Jones, the fourth son, was a member of the Missouri Legislature, and 
afterwards, removing to Texas, became a patriot in the war for 
independence, and aided in annexing that republic to the 
United States; William P. Jones, the youngest son, at the time of his 
death, was a past midshipman in the united States Navy, and had just 
returned from a tour through Europe, where he had been sent by the 
Government, when he died suddenly of cholera in Dubuque. 
 
GENERL GEORGE WALLACE JONES, the subject of this memoir, was 
born at Vincennes, Indiana, on the 12th of April, 1804. At a suitable age 
his father sent him to be educated under the guardianship of Henry Clay 
at Transylvania University, Lexington Kentucky, where he graduated in 
1825. He then commenced the study of law in the office of his brother-in-
aw, Honorable John Scott, then a member of Congress from Missouri. In 
1826 he was appointed Clerk of the United States District Court at St. 
Genevieve, under Honorable James H. Peck, United States District 
Judge. 
 
His health becoming impaired by too close and assiduous application to 
study and the duties of his office, by the advice of his physician and 
devoted friend, Honorable Lewis F. Linn, he abandoned the law office 
and the desk, and in 1827 removed to Sinsinawa Mound, Wisconsin, 
then embraced within the limits of Michigan Territory, where he engaged 
in mercantile business, farming and smelting lead ore. As early as 1828 
he bought lead of the Sac and Fox Indians on the spot where Dubuque is 
now situated, those Indians being at that time the occupants and workers 
of the mines opened here by Julien Dubuque in 1788. In this 
neighborhood General Jones established the first 
reverberatory furnace ever erected in Iowa, and was one of the first to 
open stores in Dubuque and Peru. 
 
During the Black Hawk War, in 1832, he was an Aid-de-camp to 
Governor Dodge, who had command of Posey's Brigade of Illinois Militia; 
and at the close of the war, contrary to his wishes, he was appointed to 
succeed Governor Dodge as colonel of militia, the latter being appointed 
by President Jackson major of a battalion of rangers. 
 
In the Spring of 1833 General Jones was nominated by a mass meeting 
of the people of Mineral Point for Judge of the Territorial Court of that 
locality, but being present at the meeting he respectfully declined the 
proffered honor. However, after the proceedings of the meeting had been 
transmitted to the Governor at Detroit, by due course of mail General 
Jones received a commission as Judge of the Court. He remained on the 
bench till October 1835, when he was elected a delegate to Congress 
from Michigan Territory, which then embraced what now forms the 
States of Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota, and the vast 
territory lying west of them to the Rocky Mountains. On vacating the 
bench General Jones presented to his county the whole amount due for 
his services as judge for the erection of a court house. 
 
In the contest for Congress his competitors were judge Woodbridge, of 
Detroit, afterwards United States Senator fro the State of Michigan; 
Judge James D. Doty, afterwards delegate in Congress, Governor of 
Wisconsin and member of Congress from that state, and Honorable 
Morgan L. Martin , subsequently delegate in Congress from Wisconsin 
Territory. Hs success against such a brilliant array of competitors shows 
the high appreciation in which General Jones was the held by the 
people. 
 
During the session of Congress to which he was then elected, General 
Jones drew up and procured the passage of the bill establishing the 
Territory of Wisconsin, and that before the Territory of Michigan had 
been admitted into the Union as a state  a thing which had never 
occurred in any other instance in the history of the country. Neither his 
constituents nor any of the members of Congress expected the passage 
of the bill when he reaches Washington in December, 1835. But such 
was the tact, perseverance and popularity of General Jones, that through 
the influence he was able to bring to bear securing the aid of General 
Jackson, Daniel Webster, John C. Calhoun, Thomas H. 
Benton, James K. Polk, and many of the ablest statesmen then at 
Washington, who became his personal friends, the bill was passed. 
General Jones gave the name of Wisconsin to the new Territory, and 
during that session, though the only delegate from all this vast country, 
he procured large appropriations from Congress for roads from Green 
Bay towards Chicago, from Milwaukee and Racine to the Mississippi, 
from the northern boundary of Missouri, via Dubuque, to Prairie du Chien 
, and thence to Green Bay; an appropriation of $5,000 for each of the 
towns of Racine, Milwaukee Sheboygan and Green Bay; $20,000 for the 
erection of public buildings in Wisconsin, and $40,000 for the 
improvement of the Lower Rapids of the Mississippi. He procured also 
large appropriations to purchase from the Sac and Fox Indians and 
extent of territory which now forms some of the richest and most 
populous counties of Iowa, and for the purchase of the Winnebago 
country east of the Mississippi, and grants of 640 acres of land for each 
of the towns of Fort Madison, Burlington, Bellevue, Dubuque, Peru and 
Mineral Point. 
 
In 1837 General Jones was re-elected to Congress by an almost 
unanimous vote of Mr. Meeker. At this session he procured the passage 
of the bill establishing the Territory of Iowa, and making large 
appropriation for the construction of the Capitol and the Penitentiary, and 
$5,000 additional for the Territorial Library. He also procured large sums 
for the prosecution of surveys west of the Mississippi, and $40,000 for 
additional improvements at the Des Moines Rapids. At the same session 
he also procured a grant of alternate sections of land, five miles on each 
side thereof, for the construction of a canal from Milwaukee to Rock 
River  a piece of devotion to the public welfare which strange to say, 
excited the prejudices of unthinking people against him, in consequence 
of the increase of each section reserved by the Government from $1.25 
to $2.50 per acre, which was usual in such cases, and notwithstanding 
the Territorial Legislature had memorialized Congress for the proposed 
canal. 
 
This, together with the part which General Jones took in being second for 
Cilley in his duel with Graves, defeated his election to Congress in 1838. 
We can not here enter upon and elaborate defense of the course 
pursued by General Jones in that particular. No doubt the fact that he 
yielded a reluctant consent to the urgent solicitation of his friend who had 
already determined that nothing should prevent him from accepting the 
challenge, seemed to him a sufficient justification of his course, and has 
been so generally regarded by his friends. Honorable Lewis F. Linn, 
United States Senator from Missouri, wrote a letter to the Galena 
Democrat, in which he says: "General Jones only consented 
to become second after earnest solicitation on the part of Mr. Cilley and 
his friends, and because that gentleman could not obtain the aid of any 
other friend that could be relied on." Again he says, referring to General 
Jones: "Our friend is blameless in the unfortunate affair." 
 
No one has ever charged General Jones with want of truthfulness, honor 
and chivalry in the matter; but the prejudice against him in the Northwest 
and the Eastern States was mainly because of a difference of opinion as 
to the code duello, and the fact that the unfortunate victim of his own 
courage and sense of honor was a Northern man. Had Graves been shot 
in the case no blame would have been attached to General Jones. 
 
Franklin Pierce, in a letter to General Jones says: "The proceedings of 
certain meetings at the East , and remarks in newspapers must have 
fallen under your observation, in relation to your conduct as second to 
your unfortunate friend, have occasioned me much pain, although I have 
never doubted for a moment that a full development of all the facts would 
completely exonerate you in the public mind from the unjust and injurious 
expressions to which I allude." 
 
When the news of the establishment of a separate territorial government 
for Iowa reached the people here, they immediately assembled in mass 
meetings in many places, without distinction of party, and passed the 
most complimentary resolutions, strongly recommending their able and 
indefatigable delegate, whose efforts to serve then had been crowned 
with such signal success, for their governor. From the proceedings of a 
public meeting held in Dubuque, and published in the Iowa News of that 
period, we extract the following: "Resolved, That the pre-eminent and 
peculiar qualifications, without any reference to his past services, 
command for our highly talented and admired delegate in Congress, the 
Honorable George W. Jones, the decided and unanimous declaration of 
our earnest desire to see him occupy the gubernatorial chair of the future 
Territory of Iowa." 
 
Petitions were sent to the President, signed by more than a score of the 
leading representatives and senators of the United States, asking that 
General Jones be appointed Governor. We have seen copies of the 
letters of Honorable Isaac H. Bronson, Honorable Lewis F. Linn, 
Honorable James Buchanan, and others, paying the highest 
compliments to the abilities and character of General Jones, and asking 
for his appointment to the governorship of the new territory. The 
President, however, had scruples about the constitutionality of the 
appointment of a member of Congress during his term of service to any 
other office, and, in accordance with this belief, Ex-Governor Robert 
Lucas, of Ohio, was appointed the first governor of Iowa Territory. 
 
The energy and influence of General Jones in securing most of the 
territorial offices for his constituents, which had usually been filled in new 
territories by men from the states, was worthy the commendation which it 
universally received. Against the importation of officers into the territory, 
to take the places of responsibility and profit which of right belonged to 
the people thereof, General Jones strongly protested in an able 
document sent to the President, and was permitted to name fourteen out 
of the eighteen officers provided for in the territorial bill. These were 
mostly accepted upon his recommendation alone, as the people, not 
anticipating that he would succeed in getting the bill passed, had made, 
except in a few instances, no recommendations. 
 
In 1838 General Jones procured the establishment of the two first land 
offices in Iowa  one at Burlington, the other at Dubuque; and through his 
untiring efforts during the same session, the bill creating a Surveyor 
General's Office at Dubuque became a law. The office was first filled by 
Albert G. Ellis of Green Bay, who was the incumbent till 1840, and upon 
his resignation President Van Buren appointed General Jones, who took 
charge of it in March of that year, and occupied it till the Spring of 1841, 
when he was removed under the Whig administration of General 
Harrison, and retired to his farm at Sinsinawa Mound. 
 
For about ten years General Jones had been in the public service, 
including his service in the Black Hawk War. When he left his own 
private business he was the owner of several large mercantile and 
smelting establishments; every thing about his delightful residence 
betokened comfort and plenty; but when he returned to his farm his 
effects of almost every description had passed away  he was a 
comparatively poor man. Out of his salary he had saved very little, being 
a man peculiarly social and hospitable in his nature, and of the most 
liberal and generous impulses. Such a man, surrounded by constant 
appeals to his natural generosity, could save but little out of the salary of 
a 
member of Congress; and General Jones never served his country for 
money  the welfare of his constituents was his chief aim in political life. 
 
In October, 1842, Chief Justice Dunn, of Wisconsin, tendered him the 
appointment of clerk of the court, which he accepted, and discharged its 
duties with the same promptitude and fidelity which had marked his 
course while in the House of Representatives of the United States. 
 
In 1845 President Polk restored him to the Surveyor General's Office and 
Dubuque. When spoken to on that subject by Governor Dodge, of 
Wisconsin, the President remarked: "I remember General Jones perfectly 
well, sir; I messed with him, esteemed him highly, and will appoint hi to 
any office he may desire in Wisconsin with pleasure." He therefore 
returned in April, 1845, to the Surveyor General's Office, the duties of 
which he proved himself well qualified to discharge. 
 
The personal popularity of General Jones at Washington, and his tact 
and skill in securing almost any measure he undertook, were matters of 
such public notoriety that he was often called upon to use his influence at 
the Federal Capital, and he was uniformly successful. An instance of this 
occurred in 1842, after the President had removed the Land Office from 
Dubuque. A public meeting was called, and General Jones was sent to 
Washington to have the order countermanded. He went, and was 
complete successful in his mission. The office was restored to Dubuque. 
Again, in 1846, when the low maximum price per mile which he was 
instructed to allow for the surveying of the public lands, and certain 
grievances under which the clerks of his office labored, induced those 
interested to seek relief and the hands of Congress, they urged and 
entreated him to repair to Washington and endeavor to procure them 
additional compensation. He was gone several weeks, and succeeded in 
having a law passed doubling the price paid to deputy surveyors, and 
materially increasing the salary of clerks. 
 
On the 7th of December, 1848, General Jones was elected to the Senate 
of the United States, and by a succeeding election continued Senator till 
the 4th of Match, 1859. Honorable Augustus C. Dodge, of Burlington was 
his colleague. When these two senators-elect arrived and the Federal 
Capital and called to pay their respects to President Polk, the latter paid 
them a high compliment. Taking them both by the hand, he said: "If Iowa 
had left the choice of her senators to me, you are the very men whom I 
should have selected." 
 
The course of General Jones in the Senate was characterized by his 
usual ability, fidelity to Democratic principles, and indefatigable labor for 
the welfare of his constituents. He and General Dodge were a unit on all 
important measures. They opposed the land monopoly scheme 
embodied in "Bennett's Bill," a measure introduced into Congress which 
proposed to give the states a large share of the public lands, and thus 
withhold them from actual settlement. Every species of corrupt 
bargaining was resorted to to carry the infamous measure through 
Congress, but it was firmly resisted by the Iowa Senators, who as firmly 
adhered to the Homestead Bill, an act of Congressional legislation 
which, perhaps, more than any other has been a blessing to the West. It 
has prevent ruinous consequences of a policy which would allow the 
wealthy capitalists of the old states to get possession of millions of acres 
of the choicest lands and reserve then from sale till their own exorbitant 
prices should be offered for them. Who can tell to what extent such a 
policy would have retarded the settlement and development of the 
resources of Iowa? The people of the West, and of this magnificent state 
have reason to thank those incorruptible and far-sighted men in 
Congress who prevent such a blow from falling upon their prosperity, and 
of this gratitude and thanks General Jones is justly entitled 
to a large share for the valuable services he has rendered to his country. 
 
Another measure he resisted while in the Senate, even against the offer 
of valuable railroad grants, which he and his constituents were anxious 
to procure, was a modification of the Tariff Act of 1846  an act very 
greatly affecting the interests of the West, as opposed to those of 
Eastern manufacturers and capitalists. During his services in the Senate 
he also, with the aid of his colleague, procured the Dubuque and Keokuk 
and the Davenport and Council Bluffs Railroad Land Grant  a grant 
sufficient to build some 1,400 miles of railroad in Iowa, traversing the 
state by four different routes, and inviting that immigration, labor, and 
wealth which have given to Iowa a development and progress 
unparalleled in the history of the West.  
 
At the expiration of his service in the Senate, March 4, 1859, President 
Buchanan appointed General Jones Minister to Bogota, New Granada, 
now United States of Columbia, where he remained two years and a half. 
This was entirely unsolicited and unexpected on the part of General 
Jones and without the knowledge of and member of the Cabinet, till the 
President, on the 8th of March, read them his message to the Senate 
making the nomination. The Senate unanimously confirmed the 
appointment, without the usual formality of referring it to a committee, at 
the suggestion of the two Republican Senators from Iowa, Harlan and 
Grimes. 
 
Although General Jones was a loyal man to the Rebellion, yet through 
misunderstanding and political complications, he was, on his return from 
Bogota, in 1861, arrested for treason and imprisoned in Fort Lafayette, 
but was speedily released. He prosecuted Secretary Seward for false 
imprisonment and defamation of character, but the death of Mr. Seward 
in the Winter of 1872 put an end to the suit. 
 
It is impossible in a brief biography to notice all the important acts of one 
so long in public life and General Jones, has been, and whose actions 
both in and out of Congress are so intimately interwoven with the history 
of the country for the next half a century. 
 
While in the Senate he offered and secured the amendment to the Illinois 
Central Railroad Bill, which extended the road to Dubuque, and gave to 
Northern Iowa an outlet East and South long before any other route has 
been opened, except the old route by water and the slow and tedious 
process of staging. This extension of the road to Dubuque in an great 
measure sacrificed the interests of Galena. The late Stephen A. Douglas, 
then a member of the Senate form Illinois, had voted for General Jones' 
amendment and had thereby offended his constituents in the Galena 
district; and, in order to conciliate them, on the eve of the election in 
1858, put forth a statement to the effect that 
he had been compelled to vote for the extension of the road to Dubuque 
in order to secure passage of the bill in any form; for Senators Jones and 
Dodge had the power to defeat the bill, and had declared their 
unalterable determination to do so in case their amendment was not 
accepted. 
 
To this statement General Jones replied in his famous letter of 
November 9, 1858, a letter in which the courage and ability of General 
Jones are equally displayed in a manner rarely equaled in political 
controversy. 
 
We omitted to mention in its proper place that in 1836 General Jones 
obtained an appropriation of $100,000 for frontier protection and for a 
military road from Keokuk to Fort Smelling, in Minnesota; $20,000 for 
making a harbor at St. Joseph, Michigan; large sums for treating with the 
Indians in his territory; $37,000 for the payment of legislative expenses; 
several township of land for a seminary of learning; and $20,000 for the 
completion of the capitol; that upon his motion and resolutions 
appropriations were made for the construction of military roads from 
Green Bay to Fort Crawford and Prairie du Chien and from the latter 
place to Fort Atkinson on Turkey River; from Burlington to Agency City; 
and also for the construction of forts and Indian Agencies. 
 
General Jones was the active and moving spirit, to an extent which this 
notice will fail to make apparent, in all those works necessary to set in 
order a new territory  naming the officers, laying out post routes, 
establishing post offices, securing the appointment of postmasters, 
securing appropriations for surveys and boundary lines. He secured 
appropriations for running the boundary lines separating Wisconsin from 
Michigan on the northeast, and Wisconsin from Illinois on the south, and 
Iowa from Missouri, and named the commissioners in each case and the 
surveyors for the Territories. 
 
General Cass remarked, in 1836, while General Jones was in Congress: 
"I have seen the face of that young man every day during the present 
session of Congress on business. He is indefatigable in his efforts to 
serve his Territory." While in the House and in the Senate the leading 
men of the country were his personal and warm friends, with many of 
whom he was on terms of intimacy; the friendships thus formed have 
lasted throughout his long career, and in most instances, where the 
subjects are still living, remain unimpaired to this day. 
 
General Jones was never a great speech-maker, but always a great 
worker, believing that he could more efficiently promote the welfare of his 
constituency by close, untiring, and assiduous devotion to their 
immediate interests as a working man than as an orator, consuming a 
large share of his time in the preparation and delivery of speeches. He 
could both speak and write with ability and effort when occasion 
required; but he has possessed that personal influence, versatile power, 
and agreeable and persuasive address, which have made him more 
potent with men in securing the support of the measure he proposed to 
carry through than all the great public speeches ever made in 
Congress. He has also possessed remarkable foresight and tact in the 
management of his cause, and this, in as great a degree as his personal 
popularity has made him uniformly successful. 
 
General Jones is a gentleman of affable and agreeable manners and of 
strict integrity of character, and has devoted a long and laborious life to 
the public service. In private he is highly esteemed as a friend and genial 
companion, with a mind rich in lore and experience. Although past 
seventy years of age he is yet healthy and active, and his mental 
faculties are unimpaired.