Friday, December 30, 2016

#10 Showmen!

When my father described a pompous person he always started out with J. Augustus------!
Mr. Jones appears quite Gentlemanly.

Posted by Buckles at 12/30/2016 05:58:00 AM

1 comments:

John Everett Jones said...

Thanks for the personal detail - dates, documents and photographs provide only part of his story.

J. Augustus Jones was from a common background. His parents were Swedish immigrants who arrived in 1852 and 1854 and settled first in Jamestown, New York and then moved to nearby Warren County, Pennsylvania. Both parents were from military families in Sweden. His father, Carl Jonsson Klang (1826-1914), eventually became known as Charles Jones in America.

The family were Swedish Lutherans and the children had public education in the local schools and worked on the farm. Older brother Richard T. Jones (1866-1956) worked training horses and likely began a dog-and-pony show for the workers in the new oil industry in this region (Drake Well is nearby). This seems to be the origin of their interest in show business.

J. Augustus Jones married Martha Louise Nicolay (1872-1962) in 1903. She was born in Chicago, the daughter of German immigrants. They adopted two children in Hot Springs, Arkansas in 1916 who were recent immigrants from England whose parents had died soon after arriving in America.

The photographs of the family from the brief period before the 1918 death from a horse kick of J.Augustus Jones are interesting and show some aspects of their life in the circus.



31 August, 2019 14:18

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