Frederick Jones

FREDERICK JONES has been identified with the commercial life of Blaine in Pottawatomie County over twenty years. He came there with little besides a practical mercantile experience and has built up and become the owner of the chief store of the town.

Mr. Jones has lived in Kansas since he was a boy of four years. He was born in Stephenson County, Illinois, October 22, 1875. His people were among the earliest settlers of Stephenson County. Grandfather Robert Jones, who was born in England in 1802, grew up and married in the United States and was one of the first settlers in Buckeye Township of Stephenson County, Illinois. He was there in time to participate in some of the Indian troubles, including the Black Hawk war of 1832. His life was spent as a farmer and he was a man of high principles and justly earned the respect and esteem of a large community.

David Jones, father of Frederick, was born in 1842, also in Stephenson County. In that locality he spent his youth and was married, and in 1879 he removed to Kansas, locating at Jewell City, which was then a place far out on the frontier. He developed some of the good soil of that agricultural district and spent his active career as a farmer. He died in Jewell City in 1907. He began voting as a republican and was associated with the Alliance movement in Kansas. He filled several township offices and was a member of the Masonic fraternity. His brother, Thomas B. Jones, made a gallant record as a soldier of the Civil war and afterwards wrote a history of the Forty-sixth Regiment of Illinois Infantry. David Jones married Mary Hendershot, who was born at Reading, Pennsylvania, in 1842 and is still living at Jewell City. She became the mother of twelve children: W. E., a farmer at Jewell City; E. T., a farmer in the same locality; Orren, a mechanic at Freeport, Illinois; Ella, wife of Charles Bohnert, a farmer at Jewell City; Bert, a mechanic living at Carthage, Missouri; James, who was a locomotive fireman with the Illinois Central Railway and died at Freeport, Illinois, at the age of twenty-eight; Mary, who with her husband lives on a farm at Jewell City; Frederick, who was the eighth in order of birth; Kate, wife of Harry Trump, of Chattanooga, Tennessee; Lawrence, who clerked for his brother Frederick in the store and died at the early age of twenty-two; Robert, now associated with his brother Frederick in business at Blaine; and Anna, who died when five years old.

Frederick Jones grew up and received his early education in the public schools of Jewell City, including a course in the high school. At, the age of seventeen he left his father's farm, his early ambition being to become a merchant. He laid the foundation of his career by clerking for five-years in a store at Mankato. From there he came to Blaine in 1896 and took the management of the Blaine Mercantile Company. Later he bought stock in that enterprise and has acquired the controlling interest and has made it one of the chief points of supply for reliable merchandise over a large section of Pottawatomie County. Besides the building in which the store is located Mr. Jones owns his home and some lands in Western Kansas. In politics he follows the fortunes of the democratic party. He is a member of Blaine Camp No. 4703, Modern Woodmen of America.

At his present home town in 1905 Mr. Jones married Miss Katherine O'Shea, daughter of William and Mary O'Shea. Her father was an early farmer in Pottawatomie County, now deceased, and her mother still occupies the old homestead. Mr. and Mrs. Jones have three children: Corinne, born December 6, 1906; Lawrence, born in January, 1911; and James Delbert, born in March, 1914.

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