WM. HENRY JONES,
Proprietor of Jones' Leaf Tobacco Warehouse, Richmond, Virginia,
was born in Pittsylvania county, Virginia, August 23, 1842. He was
educated in private schools in his native county, and began business in
1865 as a dry goods merchant. A year later he went into the grocery
business, afterwards farming. One year of the latter occupation having
proven sufficient, he then took an interest in the Roanoke Tobacco
Works, at Danville, Virginia, established in 1865, by Marshal Geo. P.
Kane of Baltimore. After a time he bought the establishment, and
conducted it for some years, then sold it and embarked in the leaf tobacco
business at Danville. He moved to Richmond on January 1, 1877,
and established his present business.
The father and mother of Mr. Jones are both living, aged seventy-three
and seventy-one respectively, having eleven children, six girls and
five boys, all living, the youngest now thirty years old. His father,
Decatur Jones, born in Henry county, Virginia, January 29, 1816, was
a son of Thomas Jones of Henry county, son of Dr. Benjamin Jones
who settled in that county from Culpeper county, Virginia, and was a
son of Joshua Jones of Wales.
Joshua Jones came from Wales and settled on the present site of the
City Baltimore, Maryland, then a wild forest. Jones' Falls took its
name from him. Later in life he removed to Culpeper county, Virginia,
where Dr. Benjamin Jones was born. The latter settled in Henry county,
where he was a physician and surgeon of much local renown. He represented
his county for several terms in the State Legislature, at one
election receiving every man's vote in the county but one. He married
Elizabeth Reamy, of a Huguenot family which settled in South Carolina,
and who lived to the age of one hundred and one years, two
months and twenty-two days. They had six sons and two daughters:
Thomas, Sandfford and Reamey were planters and lived in Henry county.
The other three were surgeons, two of whom settled at Lancaster,
South Carolina, Churchill and Bartlett. A daughter of the latter, married
Dr. I. Marion Sims, of New York. Churchill married a daughter of
General Davie, at one time minister to France. The father of Governor
John Morehead, of North Carolina, was Dr. Benjamin Jones' first cousin,
and Gen'l Sam Houston was his great nephew. The other son, Dr.
George Jones, settled in Rockingham county, North Carolina, and
married a Miss Dunlap, of South Carolina. The eldest son Thomas,
grand father of the subject of this sketch, married Elizabeth D. Lyell, of
Brunswick county, Virginia, whose mother was Anne Stuart, of Scotland,
and a direct descendant of that great family.
The mother of Wm. Henry Jones, born in Pittsylvania county in
1818, is Nancy, daughter of John Keen and Nancy Witcher, her mother
sister of Vincent Witcher of Pittsylvania county. Mr. and Mrs. Decatur
Jones now reside at "Bachelors Hall," Pittsylvania county.
In Pittsylvania county, December 6, 1863, Wm. Henry Jones married
Elizabeth Frances Keen. They have one daughter, May. Mrs. Jones
was born in Pittsylvania county, a daughter of Elisha F. Keen, and a
granddaughter of John Keen, both of that county. Her father, born
June 25, 1825, died in 1868. Her mother, Mary Ann Keen, nee Perkins,
died in 1886, aged fifty-five years.
