Frontier Scout & Lawman Helped Open The Territory - Grady County, Oklahoma Transcribed by: Diron L. Ahlquist 28 Jan 2002 Return to Grady County Archives: http://www.usgwarchives.net/ok/grady/grady.html ========================================================================== USGENWEB NOTICE Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm ========================================================================== ::Verden Cemetery Frontier Scout & Lawman Helped Open The Territory by Diron Lacina Ahlquist The son of William P. and Susan M. Jones, James N. "Jimmy" Jones was born in Kentucky on November 28, 1847. He continued to live in Kentucky until the outbreak of the Civil War when he enlisted on the side of the Confederacy and joined General Morgan's brigade and participated in that officer's celebrated raid into the North. Upon Lee's surrender, Jones went to Illinois and lived with his father's relatives for a few years. However, calm domestic life did not appeal to him and he went south to Texas where he gained employment in the mercantile firm of Sheets & Co. at Sherman in 1868. This too did not appeal to the young man and he again relocated, this time to the Indian Territory where he first arrived at Pauls Valley in the Chickasaw Nation. Jones then managed to gain employment with the Indian Agent at Fort Sill in late 1870. Jones was well-liked at the frontier post, but had a love for the liquor bottle which would plague him for the rest of his life. On one occasion, in the fall of 1871, he attempted to kill an Indian who he suspected had murdered two civilian cattle herders at Fort Sill. He was unsuccessful in his pursuit, but was expelled from the Indian Territory at the order of the Indian Agent. His whereabouts for the next three years are uncertain. About 1874, Jones returned to Fort Sill where he was employed as a government scout serving in this capacity alongside such notables as Simpson Everett "Jack" Stilwell and John "Jack" Killmartin. His service with the Army during the turbulent Indian War of 1874/1875 is well documented and led to his retention in the area for several years. However, his indulgence in the wine cup again landed him in trouble in December 1874 when he, Stilwell, and Killmartin disturbed the peace by shooting their revolvers in the air at Henrietta, Texas. They were arrested and each fined a minimal sum. In 1875, Jones was sent into the Chickasaw Nation at the order of Indian Agent P.B. Hunt and arrested two horse thieves named John and William "Arkansas Bill" Morrow. The men had been charged with stealing horses from the Indians at Fort Sill and were soon taken before the federal court at Fort Smith, Arkansas where they received prison terms. It was about this time that Jones secured a deputy U.S. marshal commission from the Western District of Arkansas and holds the distinction of being the only deputy marshal stationed at Fort Sill until the 1890s. However, soon after receiving this commission, he and Killmartin attempted to arrest a man named Thomas Campbell east of Fort Sill. The suspect apparently resisted arrest and was fatally shot and killed. Jones stood trial at Fort Smith, but was acquitted of any wrongdoing in the matter. Jones continued to serve as a deputy U.S. marshal for a short time in addition to his scouting duties at Fort Sill, but by 1879 was given the position of Chief of Indian Police at the Wichita Agency located at Anadarko. In this capacity, he continued to serve the population of the western Indian Territory until about 1885. In the early 1880s, he was again tried at Fort Smith for the murder of two horse thieves who had been in his custody. Jones claimed that the men had been taken from him by three men claiming to be lawmen from the state of Texas. A short time later, the bodies of the two outlaws were found in a decaying state a short distance southeast of Fort Sill near the present site of the Fort Sill Indian Hospital at the junction of Interstate 44 and Cache Road in Lawton. He was acquitted of the murder charges and returned to his duties at the Wichita Agency. In the mid-1880s, Jones was arrested on charges of cattle theft and impeding the investigation of a deputy U.S. marshal and tried before the federal court at Graham, Texas. However, he managed to once again gain an acquittal on all charges levied against him. He returned to the Indian Territory where he married a mixed-blood Kiowa/Cheyenne/Mexican named Nellie and settled down to a life of farming and ranching. By this union, he had at least nine children. Following the opening of the Kiowa, Comanche, & Wichita Reservation to settlement, Jones was involved in the selling of town lots for the town of Verden and owned the James N. Jones Townsite Company. Jones enjoyed a popular existence at Verden and was known by locals as "Uncle Jimmy". James N. Jones spent his final days living with his daughter, Jessie Lee Dempsey, in the vicinity of Verden and Chickasha where he died as a result of pneumonia on January 5, 1929. He was laid to rest in the Keotah/Jones family plot in the northwestern corner of the Verden Cemetery. In the nearly sixty years that James N. Jones lived in southwestern Oklahoma, he saw the landscape abruptly change from a wide-open prairie reserved for displaced Plains Indians to a fenced-in land of modern conveniences and problems. As an Indian Agency employee, he became acquainted with the Indians of the area and absorbed their way of life. As a scout for the U.S. Army, he learned the geography of the area so as to be most useful in his official capacity. As deputy U.S. marshal and later as a Captain of Indian Police, he kept the lawless in check and assisted in a very direct way in opening the land to settlement. And, finally, as a rancher and land speculator, he acted as a participant to the final closing of the frontier that was the southwestern Indian Territory. Though he definitely had his faults and was called to answer for many of them, it would be difficult to overlook the contributions that Jimmy made to the land that would later become known as Oklahoma. A more fitting tribute could not be made here of daring lawmen of long ago than that which was found in the obituary of Deputy U.S. Marshal Wiley Haines published in the Tulsa World: "The passing of these unromantic men constitutes the passing of a romantic era. It was a rough and ugly era, but in the light of that which came after, it was heroic and exciting." The author is a Claim Representative with State Farm Insurance in Oklahoma City and the editor of the Oklahombres Journal which is the official publication of Oklahombres, the organization for the preservation of Oklahoma's law enforcement heritage. He graduated from Cameron University in Lawton in 1997 with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Criminal Justice and an Associate of Science Degree in Law Enforcement. Anyone with further information on James N. "Jimmy" Jones is asked to contact the author at 8200 NW 83rd Terrace, Oklahoma City, OK, 73132. The author is currently writing a book on Jones and any information would be greatly appreciated. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Return to Grady County Archives: http://www.usgwarchives.net/ok/grady/grady.html