Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 3.djvu/1038

972 to practice law ever since, although also engaged in farming operations. He was for several years commonwealth attorney for his county and was a delegate in 1880 to the national Democratic convention in Cincinnati. He was elected to the Fifty-second, Fifty-third, Fifty-fourth and Fifty-fifth congresses, and was re-elected to the Fifty-sixth Congress as a Democrat, receiving 8,844 votes, against 4,270 votes for Bristow, Republican, and 230 votes for Crockett, Prohibitionist. Mr. Jones is a representative of a family long distinguished in the history of Virginia. His great-grandfather, Gen. Joseph Jones, of Dinwiddie county, born August 23, 1749, was prominent in the Revolutionary period, and, at the time of his death, February 9, 1824, held the office of collector of the port at Petersburg. It was said in his memory, by a leading Virginia newspaper of that day: "During the Revolutionary war General Jones was amongst the firmest asserters of his country's independence, and, in every vicissitude of that eventful and glorious struggle, he never wavered in his course, but steadily maintained the high character of an American patriot. In subsequent life, amidst all the trials of political warfare, General Jones has pursued but one course. A Republican in the strictest acceptation of the word, he has ever been on the side of the people, maintaining their just rights and ready at all times to oppose the encroachments of power, whether of foreign or domestic origin." This worthy patriot married Jane, daughter of Roger Atkinson (born February 18, 1764, died February 15, 1814), and one of their children was Thomas Jones (born August 18, 1781, died at Bellevue, November 9, 1866), who wedded, on December 11, 1804, Mary Lee, daughter of Richard and Sally Lee, of Lee Hall, county of Westmoreland. She was born February 12, 1790. Her father was the uncle of Gov. Henry Lee, known as "Light Horse Harry" Lee. Of Capt. Thomas Jones, son of Thomas and Mary Lee Jones and father of Hon. W. A. Jones, it is appropriate in this connection to give an account, in illustration of the career of a brave and modest Confederate soldier. Capt. Thomas Jones was born at Bellevue, on the Appomattox, river, in Chesterfield county, September 8, 1811, and was educated in the famous school of Gov. William B. Giles and at the university of North Carolina. After his graduation, he took charge of the large landed estate of his mother in Westmoreland county and took up the study of law with his mother's half-brother, Hon. Willoughby Newton, with whom he was subsequently associated in practice for a short time after admission to the bar. October 21, 1843, he was married to Ann Seymour Trowbridge, daughter of James and Cornelia Trowbridge, of Plattsburg, N. Y., and shortly afterward he made his home in the adjoining county of Richmond. There he held for a number of years, and until the outbreak of the war, the position of commonwealth's attorney. In 1859, soon after the disturbance at Harper's Ferry, he became a member and first sergeant of the Totuskey Grays, a volunteer company of light infantry, organized at Warsaw, under command of Capt. A. Judson Sydnor. This company, including about ninety-five men, was mustered into the service of Virginia, May 23, 1861, and Sergeant Jones, though then in his fiftieth year, was among the most vigorous and devoted of the patriotic band. On the 7th of June the company was ordered to Mathias Point, on the Potomac, where, on June 27th, they