Colusa Biographical Sketches.
CHAPTER XII.
E.W. JONES.
Among the residents of Colusa County prominent for their energy, business endowments, as also for the esteem in which they are justly held, Edward Winslow Jones is found in the front rank. He was born in Waukesha, Wisconsin, July 23, 1848. His father, James W. Jones, was one of the early pioneers of California, arriving in El Dorado County in the spring of 1850, where he engaged in mining first and afterwards in the hotel and express business, till the year 1853. In that year he located a farm eight miles north of Colusa, and in 1857 was a candidate for the Assembly from Colusa and Tehama Counties, against Ned Lewis, in which the latter, after a stirring contest, was elected by only three votes. In the early days of the settlement of Colusa County, the elder Jones was selected, by the settlers, one of a committee of three to proceed to Washington City and represent their interests against the confirmation of the Cambuston grant. He fulfilled his mission there to the satisfaction of his clients, in proving to the Interior Department the fraudulency of the grant. It will be observed that the father of the subject of this sketch was an active citizen of Colusa County in his day.
In 1859 the elder Jones sent for his family at the East to rejoin him at his new home on the farm in this county, where young Edward passed the following seven years. Having previously received a good common-school education in Wisconsin, he was sent to the State Normal School in San Francisco, where he graduated in 1868. He supplemented the knowledge there acquired with a course in book-keeping and commercial methods.
Returning now to Colusa, he entered the office of his father, who was largely engaged in the grain trade. His father dying shortly afterward, it devolved upon him to settle the parental estate.
In 1870 he organized at Colusa the firm of E.W. Jones & Co., to carry on the buying and selling of grain, which business he still conducts successfully. This firm is the owner of the following warehouses: Grangers, of Colusa, Colusa Warehouse, at Colusa, the warehouse at Sites and another at Lurline, having a combined capacity of twenty-five thousand tons. The business conducted in these warehouses is of most extensive proportions, seeing that this firm purchased and stored, in the year 1889, forty thousand tons of wheat, and for the year ending March 1, 1889, four hundred thousand pounds of wool.
During the long period of diverse activities in which Mr. Jones has conducted business, he has not neglected his duty to his townsmen in local matters of a public nature, nor have they failed to appreciate his services, given gratuitously. He was the first town treasurer of Colusa, under its new and present charter, and has occupied the position of city trustee for twelve consecutive years, a portion of this time serving as president of the Board. He has likewise served as school trustee for eight years.
Though Mr. Jones is a Republican and resides in a Democratic town, its citizens have retained him in office for the past twenty years. Though these offices were purely positions of honor and without salary or fees attached, their incumbency by Mr. Jones is as much a tribute to his unselfish usefulness as it is an evidence of the regard in which he is held personally by his political opponents. He went before the people, having been nominated, August 2, 1890, by the Republican convention for the office of County Treasurer, and was elected by a majority of twenty-seven votes. He is held in high esteem by his party, of whose County Central Committee he has been chairman during the past eight years.
Mr. Jones was the first president of the Colusa and Lake Railway, and after its consolidation with the Colusa Road, he was chosen its vice-president, which position he has ever since held.
Even amid the multiplicity of diverse business matters, Mr. Jones finds time to take a practical interest in the promotion of fruit culture, and cultivates a handsome orchard of ten acres planted to prunes and pears.
Mr. Jones was married, June 14, 1870, to Miss Nellie A. Morris, of Colusa County, a native daughter of California, by whom he is the father of four children, three of whom are living, one son and two daughters.
COLUSA COUNTY
ITS
HISTORY TRACED FROM A STATE OF NATURE
THROUGH THE EARLY PERIOD OF SET-
TLEMENT AND DEVELOPMENT,
TO THE PRESENT DAY
WITH A
DESCRIPTION OF ITS RESOURCES, STATISTICAL
TABLES, ETC.
ALSO
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES OF PIONEERS AND
PROMINENT RESIDENTS
by Justus H. Rogers
Orland, California
1891
Page 343-465
Transcribed by: Linda Diane Jackson 6/27/2009
Colusa County Biographies ~ Archive Biography Index ~ Archive Index
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