Scope and Content Note
The papers of the Roger Jones family cover the years 1649-1896, with the bulk of the material concentrated in the years 1724-1810. The papers consist of diaries, correspondence, financial papers, legal documents, memoranda, notebooks, survey plats, miscellaneous manuscripts, and printed matter. The collection is organized in Family Papers, Diaries and Notebooks, and a series of Damaged Material.
The papers are a record of the descendants of Roger Jones (1625-1701) who accompanied Lord Culpeper (Thomas Culpeper, Baron Culpeper, 1635-1689) to America in 1680. However, by 1692 he had returned to England, and his sons, Frederick Jones and Thomas Jones, became the first members of the family to settle in America, where by 1702 they had begun purchasing land in Virginia. Later, Frederick moved to North Carolina where he died in 1722. Although letters and documents from various members of the family in North Carolina are scattered throughout the papers, the collection primarily traces the history until Thomas ap Jones moved to Kentucky around 1810. Composed essentially of the papers of the first sons through the fourth generation, the collection chronicles the history of the Jones family during its transition from an English family to an American one.
The first segment of papers focuses on Thomas Jones (died circa 1757) who married Elizabeth Cocke Pratt (1701-1762), daughter of Dr. William Cocke and widow of William Pratt. Most of the correspondence consists of letters exchanged between members of the family including Thomas’s brother Frederick, his wife, and members of the Pratt and Catesby families. The letters generally depict the life of the planter class with emphasis on financial affairs, inheritances, marriage settlements, wills, and the education of the children. A few of the earlier ones reflect some concern for maintaining the same social status in Virginia that the family enjoyed in England. The non-family correspondence relates to financial matters such as Thomas Jones’s extensive land holdings, shipments of tobacco, and the purchase of goods from England.
After 1757 the collection centers on the affairs of the oldest son, Thomas Jones (1726-circa 1785), a colonel in the state militia and a clerk of the Northumberland County Court. This group of papers contains numerous letters from his brother, Walter Jones (1745-1815), who studied medicine in Scotland and later served in the Virginia House of Burgesses and in the United States Congress. Because of Walter Jones’s association with the county court, his papers include several non-family legal documents, actions brought before the court, lists of fees due the clerks, and bills and receipts for legal services rendered by Jones that often cite specifies of the cases involved. These documents supplement the public records of the transactions of the Northumberland County Court. Colonel Thomas Jones’s papers also include correspondence with agents in England and Scotland who marketed the family’s tobacco and purchased supplies for shipment to the colony.
A third and small group of papers belonging to Major Thomas Jones (died circa 1800) relate primarily to his business affairs, but includes some family correspondence, especially with his uncles, Frederick and Walter Jones. Several manuscripts concerning the schooner Polly, which Major Jones owned, and numerous diary-type memoranda covering finances, weather conditions, and plantation crops are interspersed in the later years of his papers. Three notebooks of plantation crop records and a memorandum book of notes and drafts of legal documents pertaining to Thomas Jones’s service as justice of the peace of Henrico County between 1783 and 1794 are located in the Diaries and Notebooks series of the family papers.
After 1800 the papers are more fragmentary and mainly consist of family correspondence to Thomas ap Thomas Jones (1782-1843), who moved to Clark County, Kentucky. A memorandum book with an account of one of his journeys from Virginia to Kentucky is filed in the Diaries and Notebooks section of the papers.
All the family papers prior to the Civil War contain references to slave holdings, including some lists by plantations and records of expenditures for slave clothing and other needs.
The collection features two letters of the 1860s from Steven R. Mallory, secretary of the Confederate navy, to Lieutenant Catesby ap R. Jones, commander of the Merrimac in its battle with the Monitor and later chief of ordnance of the Confederate navy, and a statement from the chief clerk of the Peruvian Department of Foreign Affairs certifying Jones’s service with the Peruvian government in 1866. A group of papers between 1879 and 1896 and some undated genealogical data generated by Lewis H. Jones in preparation for his family history, Captain Roger Jones of London and Virginia (Albany, N.Y., Joel Munsell’s Sons, 1891), complete the family papers. Some of the earlier letters and papers were published in three installments in the January, April, and July 1918 issues of the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography.
Correspondents in the collection include Bogle & Scott, William C. P. Breckinridge, William Byrd (1674-1744), Robert Carter (1663-1732), Mark Catesby, Farell & Jones, Charles Goore, Patrick Henry (1736-1799), Elizabeth Catesby Cocke Holloway, Elizabeth Cocke Pratt Jones (1701-1762), Lewis H. Jones, Roger Jones (1625[?]-1701), Walter Jones (1745-1815), Walter King, Thomas Knox, William Molleson, Lawrence Muse, Thomas Nelson (1738-1789), John Pratt, James Russell, and John Warden.
Three containers of severely damaged brittle and crushed fragments of correspondence, accounts, and printed matter located at the end of the collection have not been included in the microfilm edition of the Jones family papers.