LAWRENCE COUNTY YESTERYEARS
(unknown newspaper article with picture) Sept. 11, 1976
(The following story of the Jones family settling in the Athalia area during the Civil War and establishment of the Baptist Church and the Jones Cemetery this was prepared by Virgil Pigman of Proctorville and Alice Jones Hall of Hurricane, W Va, grandchildren of James and Elizabeth Jones, who are mentioned in the article. )
In 1850, John and Thomas Jones were in Rome Township, prospecting for land on which to build homes for their family. They found a suitable place in 1854 and returned to their families at Tazewell, Virginia where they owned a large tract of land which was mountainous and very rugged.. When war broke out between the states, the family, which didn’t believe in slavery and didn’t want to fight against a brother whom they had left in the North, decided they would pack all their belongings and try to travel through the Southern Army to settle in the North. In 1862, Tom and John Jones packed their belongings on ox carts and started north with their wives and children.
Their Children
Among the children was one named James (Jim) and his wife Charlotte Birchfield Jones. He was the son of John Jones, and with him were his brothers and sisters, Elizabeth, George, Lewis, Andrew, Emma, and Jacob.
They traveled North from Tazewell To Bluefield, always on the alert for fear the Army would become suspicious of their leaving Virginia. The women and children would drive the oxen by day, and the men would hide in the woods and be on the lookout for food. Then they went from Bluefield to Welsh and on to Beckley. Between the last two towns, the men were forced to stay away from the caravan for a week because of Southern Army activity. this created a hardship for on the women and children for food, for they relied upon such game as bear, deer, turkey, rabbits, squirrels, and numerous other animals.
After they left Beckley, the route wasn’t clear. They crossed the Guyandotte River near Logan and moved over the mountains into the Coal River Valley, then over Blair Mountain and Gulf Mountain into Danville, and then on into Marmet on the Kanawha River. They turned down the James River turnpike to what is now Huntington. But were always running into trouble because the Southern soldiers were everywhere.
It had taken them a long time to reach Guyandotte, and there they ran into real trouble because it was a hot spot between the North and South, and they couldn’t get (end of article)
0 Comments