Lapeer-Oakland County MI Archives Biographies.....Jones, Elijah O. 1827 - 
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Joy Fisher sdgenweb@yahoo.com March 16, 2007, 4:48 pm

Author: Chapman Bros. (1892)

ELIJAH O. JONES. This well-known citizen of Lapeer was born in Bristol, Ontario
County, N. Y., March 21, 1827, and is a son of Elijah and Lusania (Hathaway)
Jones. His boyhood days were spent upon a farm until he reached the age of
fifteen years when he came West and spent some time in the Territory of
Wisconsin, where he met Gen. Huguenan, who was then Marshal of that Territory.
He served for one year receiving $42 in wages and then went to learn the
tinner's trade with Marshall & Phelps, in what is now Kenosha, then known as
Southport. After being with them three or four years he returned home at the age
of eighteen and worked as a journeyman in Canandaigua, and a year later started
in business for himself in Bristol. There he was married June 8, 1848, to Miss
Polly Gooding. He then removed to Honeoye, where he engaged in his trade and
also handled stoves. He then returned to Bristol on account, of the ill health
of his wife, where she died October 31, 1852, leaving one child, Albert D. Mr.
Jones then contracted a second marriage with Hannah A. Richards, then returned
to Honeoye. He remained in the business there for some four years and then
removed to Michigan, locating in Oakland County, in 1859.

  Upon coming to Michigan our subject bought eleven acres of land at Oakwood and
improved his little place while he carried on his trade. He raised profitable
crops of hops and put the land in such condition that he sold for $1,200 what he
had paid $300 for. He then removed on a farm in Oakland County and nine years
later bought a place seven miles from Lapeer, where he lived until he removed to
that city in 1888, and in the meantime had improved his farm from a swamp to one
of the best estates in Elba Township.

  By his second marriage Mr. Jones has eight children, namely: Murray L., a
farmer in Hadley Township, this county, and the father of three children;
Carrie, who is the wife of Delos Loomis, and the mother of one child, and lives
at Oakwood, Oakland County; Nellie, who married Harvey Pheips and lives on her
father's farm; Alice; Melvin E., of Denver; Nora, Frank and Fred. The latter two
are twins but have no special resemblance to each other, and these five younger
children are at home with their father and mother.

  He of whom we write is a stanch Republican in his political views and has been
identified with that party since its formation. Both he and his wife are
believers in the universalist doctrine and he aided materially in the building
of the church and in maintaining its services, but on account of what he
considers a falling away from the truth in the preaching of the word by the
ministers of his church he and his companion have separated themselves from that
body and have become attendants of the Presbyterian Church. We give herewith an
address which he makes to his family and which he wishes them to consider as a
memorial gift from their parents. It is gratifying to the family to be able to
embody this address in this beautiful volume.

  Mr. Jones thus writes: "Some one has said, 'When you make a friend a present
give him something of your own production of art or skill that represents your
inner-self.' Having an opportunity to leave for you, dear children, some little
incidents of my early life and thoughts in an elegantly bound volume of varied
biography, I deem it a pleasure to write these lines which you will consider as
a memorial gift from your parents:

  "When about fourteen years of age a man by the name of Lamb was hired to teach
our school on Baptist Hill, my birthplace, in the basement of the Universalist
Church. He was a little stiff and unpleasant and was called by some 'a blue
Presbyterian,' and it was evident that his manner rather than his name
represented his creed. He constantly compared his creed with ours to the
disadvantage of the latter. It fell to the lot of Polly Gooding to arrange and
read a school paper to be filled with contributions from the scholars. For good
reasons more than one (for some seven years later she became my better-half), I
was glad to assist as well as I could in making up the paper, which was named
the Wednesday Gazette. I decided to write an acrostic on this title and to weave
into it my thoughts of a God infinite in wisdom, power and love, and to make our
teacher feel if possible how limited was his idea of a God, compared with the
God of the Bible as revealed by our Lord and Saviour. My verses read as follows: 

" Who mars the peace of fathers, mothers, sisters brothers, 
Ensnares their lives in hoops of fear and wrath. 
Dear friend, is it the Saviour or his followers who teach that God is love? 
No, but they who in the sacred desk stand and preach of the final separation of
     man; 
Eternal as the end of time to be with Jesus around the throne, or 
Suffer alone mid groans, in the dark night of hell. 
Do you dear sir, with honest mind believe, that God will draw the line; 
And stand at the Judgment Throne to choose and separate his own? 
Yes, such must be the thoughts of those who believe in eternal woes.

" Gay are the waving flowers on the distant plains, 
And beneath their rosy heads lie the sleeping dead; 
Zion by angels sung will draw all the wanderers home. 
Each harp and tongue will sound above,
  To all below that God is Love, 
To you, our friend, our Father will say,
  Each child of mine shall never stray.

  " Fifty years have gone like a dream and I now have this word for my children:

" To-day this world is full of beauty, full of love;
And for each sorrow in life's struggle here, 
There's love and bright joys for each one and promise above,
Flowers will bloom but no sorrow is over there.

  "Since that early estimate of the Holy One, these long years has intensified
my faith in the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, His divine child.
I would correct one great error: When the spirit returns to the Giver the body
is dead. Christ nowhere in his teachings entertained the thought of any spirit's
death or that it remained in the grave, but the separation of the spirit and
body. As the great Apostle taught 'The spirit will return to God who gave it and
the body to dust as it was.' We shall have no more use for our mortal bodies
than the golden winged butterfly has for the carcass of the crawling worm. I
quote from a Christian paper 'Still the great topic is the Bible. No other is so
fascinating, so profound, so elaborate, so useful. In regard thereto we must
carefully inform ourselves or drop behind in the great race of the century.'

  "I have taken one paper under two names, the Christian Embassador and the
Christian Leader published in Boston for forty successive years save one, and
the Free Baptist, of Boston, for five or six years. In no other period have the
waters of theology been moved as they are to-day. As a great cloud casts shadows
and hides the sunbeams so repulsive dogmas have shut out the Gospel beams of a
risen Christ, but the people are reading and studying the Bible as never before
and,  the pews are beginning to think.' If a misquotation or a misrendering of
the text is given to prove a theory, rest assured that in every audience,
whether in cathedral or school-house there will be some one to sift the false
teachings through the word and let it reveal the truth.

  "What is the universe and its relations to the soul, and what is eternity,
that measureless and incomprehensible term? It is one never ending, unbroken,
but ever shifting present, a period of unchanging time, like the point in a
carriage wheel that rests on the ground unmoved, while the wheels rolls on. And
so we too live in' this mysterious period of the eternal present, mid the
shining stars that roll on forever. This golden moment clasped hands and
embraced the mortal and immortal in the hour of birth.

  "A kiss of infinite love, a flash of immortality is printed by Divine lips on
the cheek of this child- his own image, an impress of the immortal God's holy
gift of love. The soul's album in which are printed in unfading colors the
starry world above and all the joys and beauties of this earthly life; a
memorial gift to be carried in spiritual life from earth into realm of diviner
light,-the summer land of the soul, where its unstained leaves in brighter
colors will be impressed with the joys and glory of immortal being. If this is
true of the soul and its relation to God and the universe. there is no soul need
be alone one moment in thought but may be assured that it will take with itself
all friends and with them join those who have already passed on into the higher
life.

  "In the economy of God's dealings with his children there is no external
reward for virtuous act. The soul's constitution is such that an act of virtue
rewards itself and so virtue carries back its own reward. The moral act feeds
and developes the soul, such is Divine law. By the same law the evil thought is
entertained in the seed and will produce its own fruit in sorrow and punishment.
The penalty will be the exact measure of the guilt in the transgression of the
law moral or physical. As the sunbeams enter the diamond that reflects their
beautiful colors, so truth, virtue and love enter the soul, develop it in
righteousness that it may reflect more and more of Divine love. God's truth and
life and light; earthly sins are moral darkness and in God's Providence must
fade out.

  "We believe in one over-ruling providence, infinite in wisdom, power and love
who will ever be most merciful to his weakest child, so we believe that the
Scriptures most certainly teach that God has purposed in and through Christ the
final holiness and happiness of all his children. Thus believing, we helped to
build the Universalist Church of this city and have aided by our means and
attendance until within a short period to support its preaching services. It is
now September 5, 1891, I am sixty-four years old and your mother is fifty-six.
Soon after the erection of this house of worship we had joined the church, not
the building nor the people who gathered here, but Christ's Church, organized by
himself over eighteen hundred years ago, for we believe that there is but one
Christian Church, but many organized bands of Christian men and women. On
account of modern rationalism and humanitarianism having been recently taught by
the preachers of the Universalist Church, we felt it our duty to leave that
particular organization and since have attended the Presbyterian Church.

  "We believe in the verity of historical Christianity, that in no age have the
truths of the Gospel records been authenticated as they are to-day, both by the
concessions of learned skeptics and the united testimony of the ablest Christian
scholars. If there is one fact in the Gospel that is more forcible and more
clearly taught than any other, it is that Christ's authority was Divine. Take
this light out of the New Testament and its glory is gone; nothing but a dark
lantern remains and a badly shattered one at that. We believe that God put into
his human soul his own loving spirit without a measure and that he came to be
pre-eminently the son of God as he is the son of man, the mediator between God
and man, the man Christ Jesus who gave himself a ransom for all.

  "Let the heart of man ascend in grateful song to our God and His Christ for
this revelation of his love and wisdom. And now I desire to leave with my
children and grandchildren some thoughts that deeply stir the hearts of your
parents. Do not drink anything that will intoxicate; do not stain your lips with
tobacco; do not gamble; do not use profane language, thus staining your souls
with the misuse of your Heavenly Father's name. On these rocks multitudes of
life boats have been wrecked in the morning of life's journey. For your own
present comfort and for the bright hopes that it will inspire, your parents ask
you to make it a point to attend when you possibly can some Christian Church. Do
these things, observe our last request and be assured that God will bless you
here and receive you with richer blessings above."


Additional Comments:
Extracted from:

Portrait and Biographical Record of Genesee, Lapeer and Tuscola Counties,
Michigan, Containing Biographical Sketches of Prominent and Representative
Citizens, Together with Biographies of all the Governors of the State, and of
the Presidents of the United States

Chicago:
Chapman Bros.
1892


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