Henry M Jones
Henry M Jones is the son of Julius A and Martha (Walker) Jones, who, during the year 1826, moved from Mecklenburg County, N.C. to Madison County, TN, bringing with them three children. Two others were born to them in their new home. Their vocation was agriculture. The father dying in 1831, the mother was left to provide for the family as best she could. After providing subsistence, very little could be done in the way of education, with the scanty facilities at that early day in this respect. However, they were all taught something of the three R's. The mother lived to see them all grown and settled in life, dying in August 1877, in the eightieth year of her age. Henry, the youngest of the family and the subject of this sketch, was born February 6, 1830. On attaining his twentieth year he resolved to supplement his limited education with additional acquirements. To this end he attended and taught school alternately during four years. He then studied medicine, and graduated from the medical department of the University of Nashville, in 1857, being awarded the prize ($50) for passing the best examination on anatomy. Dr. Jones located in Gibson Co., TN, until the fall of 1859, when he moved with his wife and one child (he having married Miss Mary J Bidley, of Rutherford Co., TN, April 21, 1858) to Jackson Co., AR, where he continued to practice his profession seven years, being connected during a part of the year 1862 with a Confederate regiment as assistant surgeon. In the fall of 1866, being stimulated by the high prices then prevailing, of farm products, and believing that he could attain to a more independent condition in life, he bought a tract of land containing 680 acres for $17,000, on credit of four years, and went to work, abandoning medicine. He paid for his first purchase, and has since increased his estate to 2,800 acres; and, from a cultivated acreage of 235 acres at the start, he now has 1,000 acres in one body under cultivation, which he rents to tenants, he having moved to Ironton, Mo. in 1874, for better health and other considerations. He has a good little farm of about 120 acres near Ironton in the Arcadia Valley, devoted chiefly to stock raising. Dr. Jones has been fairly successful in all his efforts, is out of debt, and worth about $60,000 - made by farming. Seven children have been born to him and wife, five of whom are living.