Caldwell County MO Archives History .....BILLY JONES FAMILY OF KINGSTON TOWNSHIP 
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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Karen Walker khw4@yahoo.com September 1, 2008, 4:32 pm

BILLY JONES FAMILY OF KINGSTON TOWNSHIP
	Narrator:  Mrs. Mary Mahala Smith, 83, of Hamilton

	Wm. Jones Family Very Early           Funeral Customs
	Jones and Far West Graveyard

     Mrs. Smith is the wife of Joseph Smith, retired farmer, and the daughter 
of Wm. Jones and Martha Bailey, who was born in Kentucky but came west to 
Buchanan County to live with Aunt Sallie Stout.
     Wm. Jones was a brother of Mrs. Caroline Peddicord of Hamilton ("Aunt 
Tomony" to Mrs. Smith), also a brother of Mrs. "Dilly" Goodman (mother of Bert 
Goodman and Mrs. James Collins).  Another sister was Mrs. Rannels and a 
brother was "Cap" Albert Jones of Callaway Co.  The old Jones family had two 
homes - one mile south of Kingston, on the Polo road (before the Civil War) 
and five miles west of Kingston, a farm of 160 acres where "Cap's" widow now 
lives.
     The Jones family came very early into the county from Kentucky, in a 
wagon.  The Grandfather Jones was dead but Grandmother Jones came along and 
died in a bad epidemic of small pox before 1850.
     To show how long the Jones family have been here, Mrs. Smith says that 
when her father Billy Jones used to go to the Mormon town, Far West (now 
utterly gone) to take dancing lessons, he used to be scared out of his wits by 
screams of panthers and howling of wolves.  She herself can recall seeing 
several buildings at Far West, stores and dwellings in the middle fifties.  
Her father taught his children the dance steps he had learned in that dancing 
class - the reel and French Four (quadrille) and others.
     Billy and Martha Jones' children were Minerva Marino Pollard of Kingston, 
John married Elizabeth McBeath (cousin of Bob Morris), Millard Fillmore 
married a Haywood out of the county, Mahala married Joseph Smith, Jeff Davis 
married a Taylor of Cameron, Lilly and Annie died unmarried, Fronia married a 
Wyckoff, and two infants died.  It is not strange that the Jones clan 
can "claim relation" to much of Caldwell County.
     The Jones graveyard is about in the middle of the first Jones farm.  Once 
enclosed by a fence in timberland, it is now a cow pasture.  Following the 
custom of the times, they put up no permanent grave marker and now the graves 
are lost.  The dead there are Grandma Mahala Jones, died about 1850, Peggy, 
sister of above; two small children of Wm. and Martha Jones, ________ Clark, 
the first husband of Aunt Dilly Goodman; Willie Jones, son of Wm. Jones and 
his first wife, a McClelland; a colored slave boy of the Jones family.  Near 
by at the Far West Methodist Church is another private graveyard, that of the 
Hill where J.T. Hill and family are buried.  Mr. Hill gave the site to the 
Methodists for a church because his dead were there.  The church is now unused 
except by bats.
     Mrs. Smith recalls some of the grave-customs of her day.  The neighbors 
built the coffin; it was their sign of sympathy instead of modern flowers.  A 
grave was dug the depth of the coffin.  At the burial the coffin was set in 
this hole and the lid or boards laid on top, on a level with the ground; then 
the ground was heaped high.  Often burials were made without a word being said 
over the body.  This memorial service might occur a week, a month or a year 
after burial or not at all.
     Interviewed  July 1934.


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