JANE MARTHA WILLIS JONES
2nd Great Aunt — Sister of David Willis.( 3rd Great Aunt to our children)
Edible plants that grow wild in south eastern North Carolina and northern Georgia are many. Twenty two varieties of mushrooms, blueberries, black raspberries, huckleberries,, raspberries, mulberries ,crab apples, persimmons, paw paws, acorns, black walnut, hickory nut, chestnuts, among them. I mention this because I think that probably our people enjoyed these things to supplement their diet. And I will wager that our distant cousins probably still do.
The following story is the story of an American family overcoming, ever triumphant, all the trials that life could bring to bear on humans during the mid-century 1800’s in America. The American Civil War truly broke families, killed brothers and uncles and fathers and did its best to destroy those who were left at home to carry on. Jane Willis Jones and her husband, John Martin Jones are presented here because their lives were so very representative of that time. (And also because we have quite a bit of information about Jane and John Calvin. Bless you, all people who leave their stories to be found so that we may revel in the lives you lived so that we could be.) This story has been written from Jane’s words about her life as a frontier wife and mother and from an account given by her son, Melvin Wylie , later in his life, for the historical society in Tucson, Arizona. We also draw from the words of Harold Willis, Andrew Jackson Willis’s oldest son.
The fall weather in Rutherford, North Carolina in October, averages 75 degrees in the day and drops to 45 degrees at night. Jane Martha Willis was born to James and Easter Wilson Willis on Thursday the 15th day of that month in 1829. Her father was a farmer and she was the third child and first daughter of eight boys and four girls, the youngest being great grandfather David (their names are included in the story of David Willis). When Jane was 7 or 8 years old, the family moved to Union County, Georgia where her father was probably interested in the land sales from confiscated Cherokee Indian lands after they were moved to Oklahoma. Jane grew to young womanhood in Union County where she fell in love with a young man named (John) Martin Jones whose family had moved to Georgia from the Rutherford, North Carolina, area around the same time as the Willis family. They married in Young Cane, a small settlement about 10 miles away from Blairsville, Georgia on May 8, 1847. Martin was the music director at their church. Jane and Martin had 8 children before they decided that they had to leave Georgia .
They were living close to his parents who owned many slaves and Jane and Martin where bitterly opposed to slavery . Her mother-in-law, Jane recalled, offered her slaves to make life easier with her large family if they would just stay. She declined. Martin’s father, John, offered Martin his share of his expected inheritance, which they accepted. They then packed up all their children and belongings and started out for Texas. Along the way they learned that Texas was a hot bed for the slavery question also. As they were crossing Arkansas, they camped by a nice cool spring and discovered that the farm the spring was on was for sale. They liked what they saw and decided to purchase the place. The year was 1859. Little did they know what was to come. — — -
The farm was fertile and they grew good crops and animals there, but, unfortunately, the War between the states blew their sanguine life to pieces and they would in short order lose all that they owned and become refugees in an unrecognizable land. They were living in the Pea Ridge area ( a famous battle ground in Arkansas not far from the Oklahoma border) which made it possible for the troops from both the north and south to stop and camp to make use of the spring that had enticed their stay and the rails from their fences which were ripped off to provide fuel for the soldiers fires. The commanders also confiscated most of the food supplies to feed their soldiers.The stock on the farm became food for armies and the gardens and fields were razed. It was a terrible time. Many of the men who were injured came to their door . They didn’t know if the men were from the north or the south but it didn’t matter, they helped them as much as they could, Melvin recalls.
Jane’s husband, Martin found himself in an impossible situation where he was forced to flee or be killed, as there were marauders not connected to either army, recruiting the men who lived in that area to join their groups to terrorize and extort the families left behind. No one was allowed to refuse. Martin knew the threat that these men posed and when they came to the Jones place he asked for a little time to get ready to go with them . They inexplicably gave him some time and Martin prepared to disappear, to go into hiding during the day and moving on at night until he made it to Springfield, Missouri, where federal troops were stationed. He was gone many weeks before his family even knew that he was indeed alive and waiting for them to join him. Meanwhile, the family suffered severe deprivations. Jane, who was pregnant with Susan, had hidden corn meal under the floor boards of their home and a neighbor gave them milk from their cow. It was winter and they were destitute . Jane said that John C and Turner would bring home a rabbit or a squirrel once in a while. They had some honey only because the soldiers were reluctant to stir up the bee’s to get the sweet treat.
During that winter Jane helped a neighbor, who lived over the hill, when she had a baby, and shortly after, the neighbor reciprocated by helping Jane birth little Susan. Finally, Melvin relates, a detachment of U.S. soldiers came and camped at the spring . Among the soldiers were two who knew Martin and brought word from him. The soldiers helped them get a team for the single wagon they had managed to save and the family began their long trek, sometimes under a flag of truce, to Springfield, Missouri, to find Martin. When they arrived in Springfield, Martin met them and the family was reunited after many months of terror and uncertainties. Jane reported that they were so happy to be together again.
Very soon after they arrived in Springfield, Martin bought another wagon and team and they left to continue the trip westward. They averaged 20 to 30 miles per day and the slave issue was so hot, that Kansas was known at that time as “Bleeding Kansas” because of the extreme unrest. They passed by Topeka and Lawrence, arriving in Atchison, where it soon became clear to them that their safety would be compromised as long as they lived close to the Missouri border. They rented a house in Atchison while Martin scouted further west. He took their oldest son, John Calvin (12), with him and started for Junction City because the word was out that there was a lot of land there for homesteading. They found the Solomon Valley, about 60 miles northwest of Junction City, to be all that they anticipated. There were plenty of buffalo and they killed and loaded their wagons with the meat, secured a homestead on a bend of the Solomon river, and on the way back sold the meat. These hunting trips became a regular way of securing a living for Martin and his boys.On the way back to Atchison, Martin rented a small house in Junction City so the family had a place to live while Martin and Johnny went back to the Solomon valley to build a home and stockade before summer came.
It is reported that the Indians did not give much trouble during the cold weather but they surely were troublesome when the weather was warm. Martin along with six other men built a fort measuring one hundred feet east and west and almost twice that north and south. They named it Fort Solomon. They dug a fine well, by hand some thirty feet deep and ten feet across, which provided plenty of good soft water for them all. The fort covered about two acres square with log homes for each family. We have a hand drawn map of Fort Solomon by Jane and Martin’s son Melvin Wiley Jones with each home of the early families delineated. (One of the names is Sam Bass. Question? Could that be the outlaw Sam Bass??)
They built cabins and in between each cabin were set rows of oak posts sharpened at the top. The doors opened on the inside of the enclosure. There were port holes on the outside of the back walls for them to fire through, if attacked. The space in the enclosure could accommodate twelve teams and wagons as well. One cabin was used as a school during the week and a church on Sunday. There were as many as ninety-five people living there sometimes. At times, when the Indians were particularly active, their biggest fear was that the Indians would come by the thousands and burn them out. Every man, woman, boy or girl big enough had to learn how to load guns and fire six-shooters. The government supplied them with guns and ammunition and one cannon which was fired regularly to keep the Indian population properly impressed with the firepower of the fort. Indian tribes native to Kansas were the Arapaho, Comanche, Mansa, Kiowa, Osage, Kiowa, and Wichita. It is hard to say which tribes the residents of Fort Solomon were most concerned about. After 1830 more than 30 tribes had been given land in what was to become Kansas, and promised that they would never be displaced again. The Civil War and the displacement experienced by many of the soldiers and even those who became inadvertant refugee’s searching for peace and holding on to that American Dream, began to push westward and the last great migrations and conflagrations of America’s native populations began in earnest.
The Indians were adept at stealing horses and sometimes they also took captives. Jane remembered them stealing two women who were held captive and used to do drudgery work and also were beaten and treated very badly by the tribes women. After almost 2 and ½ years, General Carr was camped in Oklahoma territory where the tribes spent the winter, and knowing that a particular chief held two white women as slaves, managed to get him to come to talk treaty terms. He then told the chief he must surrender the women before any peace terms could begin. The chief denied having them but the general knew from scouting reports that the chief was not telling the truth. The general told the chief that unless the women were surrendered that he (the general) would keep the chief prisoner and would hang him by the time the sun was one hour high the next day. Just before the designated time for the hanging, the women were brought to them and returned to their families, experiencing tragic reintegration stories.
Jane’s oldest daughter, Tillie,(Matilda) and Dan Bruce ,were the first couple to be married in the new settlement. Theirs was the first marriage in the county and at Fort Solomon. The following year , Tillie and Dan gave them their first grandchild, who was named Mary.
Martin made shoes for the family from buffalo and cow hides. This was quite a job for a family the size of theirs. There was always new shoes to be made or old ones to be repaired. Nothing was ever discarded, just mended and passed on to the next one.
In the summer of 1865 they planted corn which grew fine and tall, when hordes of locusts came like clouds, blotting out the sun. Anything edible was gone. They even ate the bark off the trees. The locusts left eggs which then perpetrated another round of crop devastation. Between the locusts, deer and buffalo, life was a constant battle. Fences could be built to keep out the animals but no one could do anything about the grasshoppers.
After surviving that summer , Governor Osborn called a special session and granted $70,000 dollars plus some provisions to help the needy and destitute families through the winter. Jane said that everyone looked forward to a better year in ’66 and it was a better year. After breaking the sod and sowing the grain, the gardens grew abundantly and the grain turned out well. On the river wild grapes, choke cherries, gooseberries and wild plums were abundant. Martin was busy digging a well and then a cellar for their new home. In the fall he stored pumpkins, potatoes and other vegetables in the cellar and covered it with straw and dirt. That winter they cut logs and made ready to build the new house as soon as the weather was warm enough in the spring.
Every family in the stockade was outgrowing the cabins and restless to move into their newly built homes. They knew that if they needed to, they could come back to the stockade if life on the frontier again became threatened. When spring came the house went up in a hurry. They moved in that summer. There was twice as much room as they had in the stockade cabin. Later two more rooms were added. Shingles and what lumber they needed was purchased in Salina, Kansas.
In 1867, the Kansas Pacific Railroad was completed as far as Abilene. That town was known as the wildest and wooliest in the west. It had no police force, no municipal government, no city jail. The men in the Solomon settlement cared little to go there according to Jane. (We do not have a report from the men.) It was at the end of the Chisholm Trail and all kinds of crooks and racketeers were there. However, the wild frontier was quickly becoming not so wild as families who needed schools and churches and merchants established order and bought land to farm. The towns of Junction City, Solomon and Salina were all growing by leaps and bounds and the railroad was building rails further west as quickly as possible. The new settlers were especially pleased that the mail came more often and they could hear from those they had left behind.
Babies were coming along on each side of the river and Jane reported being kept busy helping on those occasions. There was no doctor for miles, the closest was in Junction City . It wasn’t anything to have a knock on the door in the middle of the night and ride horseback over to one of the neighbors for the welcoming of the new arrival. They were always afraid of an epidemic while in the stockade because when one child got something it seemed all the children got it. Jane felt fortunate that she had worked and studied with her two brothers who had medical training. (At this writing, we have no idea which brothers she was talking about.) The knowledge really came in handy at times. However there was little medication available, and they had to make do with what they had and pray a lot. For sore throats and deep chest colds with the children, it was always a hot foot bath and some warm turpentine and lard on the throat and chest covered by a good wool cloth . Usually by morning they were much better. Goose grease was preferred rather than lard, but it was harder to come by. They always had a little peppermint for the colic and everyone was given sassafras tea in the spring to thin the blood. When the rhubarb and lambs quarter and the dandelion greens came on in the spring, they were included in the menu. With the coming of spring food was more plentiful. All up and down the river berries, wild grapes, choke cherries and wild plums grew galore. Jane reported that Turner loved to fish and was in height of his glory when he could bring in a 20 pound river cat.(fish)
Janes’s youngest, a boy, was born on January 8, 1868, and named Joseph Henry. The summer was long and hot. Martin brought lumber from one of his trips to Salina and built a tower for a windmill. He erected a fan and hooked it up to a pump below and the cattle and horses had fresh water all the time. They could water down the rows and the gardens were flourishing and then a big hail storm blew in with hail as big as marbles and in 10 minutes very little was left of the garden.
On August 12 , Indians came back into the valley and laid waste to property, stealing and burning for three days. The families retreated to the stockade and spent several days in its shelter before returning to their homes. The day they returned to their homes, the children and Jane were down by the river picking plums. That afternoon she had just taken two pies out of the oven. The aroma from those plum pies must have wafted down the river, for soon there was a stray red man at her door. He said “Me hungry,want food”. She grabbed a broom, the closest thing at hand, and he grabbed her wrists. He sat her down in a chair and made off with the two pies. By the time she got to the door he was out of sight. The girls had all hidden, scared to death that they would all be scalped. They were fortunate to get out with just the loss of two pies. Many nights Martin would be up all night when the word came that Indians were on the warpath, while the family slept.
They planted fruit trees and within “a couple or three years we had plenty of fresh apples and peaches.” The hills were black with buffalo and they were slaughtered mercilessly by some as a sport, others for meat and hides. Later the bleached bones were picked up and shipped east. The herds of the 60’s were so large that vast numbers would stop the trains on the track. A herd just west of the Solomon river was so large that when they came thundering in on a hot day, they drank the river dry. The river, reportedly, was about 30 feet across and averaged about a foot deep.
Jane said, “While there were many dangers and hardships, there were also many happy times for every household. We all shared the same joys such as weddings, new babies etc. By the same token we shared each others burdens.” Dances got to be a popular amusement of the young people. The music was usually provided by a couple of violins, a flute and a jews harp. (Google it. Interesting sound.) They were all very happy when a newcomer moved in with an organ. There were a lot of good dancers who were at their happiest when dancing the Virginia reel, the Newport minuet, waltzes and polkas. In summertime, baseball was the chief entertainment. Everyone watched the games if they didn’t participate and Jane reports that there were some really good players. In the winter there was the literary society and every one had an opportunity to display their home talents. These meetings were held once a month in the schoolhouse. After any event there were always refreshments provided by the entire community.
By this time, John Calvin (son) was doing a lot of scouting for various people on the trail and he was quite adept with an innate knowledge of the Indians and prairie life in general. Some of his early training was acquired by working with and for Buffalo Bill (William F) Cody, supplying meat for construction crews on the railroad, and later, as captain of the supply wagons to Fort Thomas, Arizona. While he was never officially in the army, he was often referred to as captain because of his various assignments with the military. The first newspaper was established by a man from England named William Goddard, Sr. The newspaper was named The Solomon Valley Pioneer. The paper printed many stories about life further west. Young Johnny just couldn’t resist the call. He was a true westerner, a scout and trailblazer. (An interesting historical aside: John Calvin’s grandson, Melvin Jones, is the founder of the Lions Club.)
“We hated to see him go,” says Jane, “because it was dangerous work, with Indian skirmishes and desperados at every turn in the trail and we really needed him at home. But he was thrilled with his new job with excellent pay and came back the following year to marry his girlfriend, Lydia Gibler at Osborne on February 22, 1875, and left for Arizona right away.” Johnny was prone to asthma and hay fever and felt much better in the dryer climate. Melvin also suffered from the same trouble . Johnny talked him into coming out with him a while. When they were getting ready to go, their father,Martin got “fiddle footed” (Janes word) and decided to go out with them to see what was going on there . They got into the ranching business and time passed quickly. Before Martin realized it, two years had passed. By that time Turner was 25 and the girls were good help, and the family left behind had a hired man when one was needed. Everything was going well at home reports Jane.
Martin and the boys left Kansas in February in a cold and blowing snowstorm. When they arrived in Arizona their first permanent stop was Milligan’s settlement, now known as Springerville, on April 2. The weather was beautiful, like spring. And had been most of the winter. It was a farming settlement raising mostly barley and livestock. The farmers had no threshing machine and had to tramp the grain with sheep for threshing. The next year Martin had a threshing machine shipped in, the first one in Arizona, which was used to thresh all the crops in the area. To Martin and the boys, the climate was a wonderful change compared to the extreme cold and heat in Kansas. After the threshing season was over, Martin sold the farmers the threshing machine and bought some cattle and started ranching. After about a year and half, Martin decided that he had better go home to see how things were going there. Turner had kept the farm in good repair and the wheat and corn looked good. The cattle were fat and several ready for market. Henry was big enough to be good help and the girls did their share of the work. Martin returned to Arizona after signing everything over to Jane in case something happened to him while he was gone.
After returning to Springerville area, Martin and Melvin stayed together. Johnny was busy on the supply wagons in and out of Fort Thomas. That fall they decided to move their cattle to the Gila Valley after purchasing the famous old “Clanton ranch” (of Wyatt Earp and the Clantons of the OK Corral fame) which joined the Fort Thomas military reservation. It was greener over there in that valley and had a better water supply. They could also see Johnny between runs and it seemed there was always more work than they could get done, because they were using their ranch as a distribution point for the thousands of head of cattle that were driven in over the trail to supply Fort Thomas and the Indians.
At this point, Melvin had also gotten interested in the Arizona mining and marble business. Martin had originally planned for Melvin to take over the ranch and he could get back home. As the years quickly passed, he finally dropped the ranching and went into the mining and marble quarrying all at the same time. John Calvin remained at the ranch and Fort Thomas. He knew well the bulk of the notorious range riding rough: Wyatt Earp, the Clantons, Doc Holliday, the Mclowerys , John Ringo, Curly Bill and many others. At Tombstone, in its heyday, there was an oversupply of its bad men. Melvin, serving as constable for the justice of the peace at Camp Thomas and Deputy US Marshal, had many opportunities for getting acquainted with the worst of them and would recognize them on sight in any provocation.
Many things were going on in Kansas with the family: marriages, birthings, deaths and also some divorces.
In 1893 Martin stayed home in Kansas until after Christmas, and celebrated the holidays with the family. He then felt that he had better get on back to Arizona and get things shaped up so that he could come back to Ottowa County to stay. When spring came there he had plans to sell and return home for good. Rather, he went back and he and the boys got more involved in a gold mine and had developed one of the best marble quarries in the country. He became so involved in this and other business ventures that he didn’t feel he could leave them. He, too, was having health problems. His health failed him suddenly and he passed away at Gatewood, Arizona on March 30 1894. Three of the boys were there with him at the time. He had definitely made arrangements and was planning to come home to stay in a few months, turning all the business over to the boys. He just didn’t quite make it. He was buried in Wilcox. Arizona, April 1, 1894 in the old cemetery northeast of town. At the time, it was their plan to bring his body back to Highland Cemetery at Minneapolis Kansas near the other departed Willis family, but as time went on and it wasn’t done, a stone was placed to mark the grave in Kansas, in his memory.
Jane said, ”When the sad news came it was hard to realize its true meaning. He was one that always came back after a long hard trip from anywhere. It still seems as though he will be coming in one day soon. He was a good husband and father. The boys had a deep sense of respect for him and the girls idolized their father. He was a true Christian god-fearing man and a born leader. Always there to give a helping hand when needed. When he set out to do a task one could depend on it being done right. He loved a challenge and when he was put to the test it seemed that he had almost supernatural strength, a true pioneer in every sense of the word.”
(The writer of the Jane Martha Willis Jones story-Mildred Jones Nicholson- wishes to add that all of these traits were amplified due to the fact that he had a wonderful wife and mother of his ten children, she was strong and courageous and gracious enough to take over in it’s entirety when she was called upon to do so, that he might be enabled to pursue what he felt was his calling. All these virtues were the foundation of our Kansas heritage. This story was written as it was seen and lived by these fantastic and stalwart people.)
In the end of her story Jane says, “It has been a great and wonderful life thus far, and well worth the living. We are a free people, living in a free state and a free nation, now undivided. God has been good to us and has sent us many blessings. I have had so much to be thankful for every day of my life. We are together on holidays, birthdays and other festive occasions. There is always a” bunch” at our house. We all get together and have such good times. Many times any number of neighbors will join us. The “latchstring is always out”
Jane passed away on February 16 1898. (interesting to note: it was the day after the Battleship Maine blew up in Havana Harbor killing 300.) She is buried in the cemetery at Minneapolis where she had intended to spend eternity next to her husband.
The information for this epistle is from the story posted on -line in 1986 by a “step” great great grandson titled: The Peaceful Solomon Valley. ( the story was taken from notes and other factual material mostly written down by Mildred Almeda Jones Nicholson, Great Granddaughter of Jane and Martin Jones. We also have much the same story from Melvin Wiley Jones for the Tucson, Arizona, Historical Society and from the words of Harold Willis, son of Andrew Jackson Willis)
