Dr. John Jones

by Bob Brail

Civic duties are those actions which citizens of a community are expected to perform. At the simplest level, those duties would include acts like voting and paying taxes. However, in every community there are those individuals who, for a variety of reasons, choose to involve themselves more deeply in carrying out civic duties. Such involvement can sometimes prove costly in many ways. Dr. John Jones, an early physician in Charrette Township, was an individual whose involvement went beyond just voting and paying taxes. Eventually this involvement would cost him his life.

Jones started life in Kentucky, but all of his adult years were spent in Missouri. John Paul Jones was born in Lexington, Kentucky, in 1789, to Giles and Isabella Jones. His father, a Welshman, came to America as a member of the British army during the American Revolution. Giles Jones was captured by American forces, released back to the British army in a prisoner exchange, before finally deserting and joining the American army. John Jones arrived in Missouri in 1812, and five years later, he and Dr. John Young set up a medical practice in Marthasville, the same year the town was platted. For many years Jones served as surgeon of the state militia, and “his practice extend[ed] over nearly all of wht now forms the eastern central counties of Missouri.”

Through marriage, Jones became part of the Boone family. On October 22, 1818, at the age of twenty-seven, Dr. Jones married Minerva Callaway, who was three days shy of her seventeenth birthday. Callaway was a granddaughter of Daniel Boone. It is not known if Jones was already serving as Boone's physician at this time, but eventually he did. After an earlier unpublished manuscript of Boone's autobiography was lost in an river incident, Jones encouraged Boone to write another one. Boone stayed with Jones and his family in order to receive medical care for his “scrofulous affection” and to dictate a second autobiography, which Jones intended to prepare for publication, with proceeds from the sale of the book to go to Boone. However, the manuscript disappeared after Jones' death in 1842. Jones was at Boone's bedside in 1820 as he was dying. Dr. Jones prescribed medicine for Boone, but he refused to take it. Boone died the next day.

Jones was an important figure in the first controversy involving Warren County politics. Shortly after the county was created in early 1833, a three-member commission was appointed by the state legislature to choose a location for the new county seat. The two towns under consideration were new entities; in fact, both towns were not platted until 1835. Opinions about this location were deeply felt and strongly expressed. Residents of the southern part of the county, where most of the early settlement had occurred, favored New Boston, located on Charette Creek near the Missouri River, between Hopewell and Marthasville. Jones was of this group. The other location, Warrenton, was in the northern portion of the county, where much of the more recent settlement had occurred, aided in part by the extension of the Boone's Lick Road.

Initially the commissioners decided in favor of New Boston, but the vote was not unanimous, and “the agitation” in the county “was daily growing more bitter.” The county clerk of court, Carty Wells, was ordered to remove his records from Warrenton, where the court had been holding sessions, to New Boston. When he refused, Dr. Jones, one of several men “who fought nobly in the interests of New Boston,” came into the county court and demanded that Wells move the records. Wells refused. The legislature then appointed a new set of commissioners who then took two more years to decide on Warrenton. County residents then confirmed Warrenton in an 1836 referendum.

As this political tension faded away, a new kind of problem beset the county, and Dr. Jones' “prominent role” in addressing this challenge would result in his murder. Beginning in 1835, gangs of “counterfeiters and horse thieves” terrorized several counties in eastern Missouri, in what became known as the Slicker Wars. In response to this lawlessness, several vigilance committees organized and took justice in their own hands. These men came to be known as Slickers because of the way their method of dispensing justice. As one source states, “Once they determined that a man was guilty, they would tie him to a large oak tree and whip him with a tough, flexible twig or stem called a withe, usually from a hickory tree. These beatings were known as slickings, thus the name for the group became Slickers.” These Slickers with their vigilante justice eventually became as much of a problem as a solution, and Anti-Slicker groups were organized.

Simply put, Dr. Jones was murdered because he knew too much. During the winter of 1841-1842, counterfeiters were at work in the Femme Osage Creek area. A man who owed money to Jones paid his bill in new coins which Jones quickly realized were counterfeit. That man's arrest eventually resulted in the arrest of the counterfeiter, who was scheduled to be tried at the next session of circuit court. Jones would be a key witness.

However, Dr. Jones was dead before the trial could be held. On January 21, 1842, a man walked up to Jones, who was in the front yard of his rural Marthasville home, and asked him for work. Jones had no need of help and suggested the man try at another house in the area. A brief conversation ensued, and then the man walked away. “Toward evening,” as Jones stepped out of his house, he was shot and fell, mortally wounded.

In his account of the incident, Gert Goebel states that the conversation between Jones and the stranger had been observed by “a young son of the doctor.” At the time of his murder, Jones had three sons who generally fit that description, Samuel, who was five; Solomon, who was nine; and John, who was fourteen. Since the description of the stranger young Jones was able to give was “so exact and so definite” including a slight limp and scars, perhaps the oldest boy was the most likely witness. However, later in his account, Goebel describes the son as “very young.”

The search eventually took law enforcement officials to Arkansas and Texas. Missouri's governor, Thomas Reynolds, prepared a proclamation offering a $300 reward for the capture of Jones' murderer but the individual was apprehended before the proclamation could be issued. A “notorious desperado,” William Mash, was arrested and brought to trial. The accused, who also used the aliases Abbott Goddard and Bill Whiskers, was identified in court by Jones' son. Unfortunately, because of the youth of the key witness and because of the testimonies of several people from Tennessee who provided Mash with an alibi, Mash was acquitted. Gert Goebel accurately describes the vigilante justice of the Slicker Wars when he states, “If the pursuers of [Mash] had held the faintest idea that this would be the outcome of the trial, they probably would not have brought the man [back] with them.” In other words, Mash would have been killed by his pursuers.

The story of Dr. John Jones is now a nearly forgotten chapter in Warren County history, yet it involves events that were at one time very important to the people of the area in the western parts of Boone-Duden country. This man, whose practice of medicine helped many people, was someone who understood that he had an obligation to undertake civic duties on behalf of those same people. This willingness to be a good citizen eventually cost him his life.

Sources: The Boone Family (Ella Spraker); Daniel Boone (John Faragher); Cityofmarthasville.org; “County History,” History of Warren County (Dorris Keeven); “Early Families,” Warren County Sesquicentennial Program (Mildred Simon); Findagrave.com; History of St.Charles, Montgomery, and Warren Counties (National Historical Company); Longer Than a Man's Lifetime in Missouri (Gert Goebel; trans. A. Schroeder and E. Nagel; eds. W. Kamphoefner and A. Schroeder); Messages and Proclamations of the Governors of the State of Missouri (books.google.com); My Father, Daniel Boone; The Draper Interviews with Nathan Boone (books.google.com); “Slicker Wars of Missouri - 19^th Century Frontier Justice” (worldhistory.us); Some Boone Descendents (Lilian Hays Oliver); “Warren County Courthouse Nomination Form for the National Register of Historic Places” (dnr.mo.gov).