THE LIFE STORY OF DANIEL K. JONES
Immigrated to US from Wales 1853
Sacramento, California, 1864--enlisted in Union army as member of Company A of the
Second California Volunteer Cavalry
1866--Panama
to Havana to New York
to Chicago
Nov 1866 moved to Newton, IA 1897--Established a coal business in Indianola, Iowa
Member of Friends Church.
"For thirty-seven years, Daniel K. Jones has been a
resident of Warren
County and is a veteran
coal dealer of Indianola. He has lived in Iowa since 1853. The state had only a few
years before been admitted to the Union and
there were still vast tracts of territory unclaimed and uncultivated. Mr. Jones
has lived to witness a remarkable transformation here as through successive
stages of growth and progress Iowa has reached
a place among the leading states of the Union.
"A native of Wales, Mr. Jones was born July 4,
1840. His father, Henry, was likewise born in that country,
was a coal miner by trade and was also a preacher of the Latter Day
Saints. His wife, Mrs. Anna Jones, died in Wales in 1850, leaving D.K. Jones
the only child. In the year 1853, the father and son came to America, the
latter being then a youth of twelve years. They crossed from Liverpool to New Orleans on a sailing
vessel, requiring them eight weeks to make the trip, for the winds died down
and for some time they were becalmed and could make no progress.
Eventually, however, they reached their destination in safety and proceeded
northward to Keokuk, Iowa, and thence to Van Buren County, where
they lived for one year, the father engaging in preaching there. It was
the intention of the father to go to Salt
Lake City and join the colony of Latter Day Saints, at
that point. D.K. Jones then left the father and went to the lead mines in
Franklin County, Missouri, where he worked for two years and in 1856 became a
resident of Atchison, Kansas. He hired out as a cattle and freight driver across the plains and made
one trip, after which he took the long journey across the plains to California. The wagon
train with which he traveled was attacked by hundreds of Indians on the
Humboldt River in Nevada
and two of the party were killed. Mr. Jones was
then but sixteen years of age. However he managed to make his escape from
the Indians, and proceeding on his way, he walked one hundred and seventy miles
in seven days with nothing to eat. With some of his comrades he walked
across the desert of forty miles, to Carson River,
and then too late to cross the mountains as they couldn't make their way
through the passes in the winter, they remained there and Mr. Jones worked for
his board. There were only five families in that valley at the
time. In the following spring, he continued his trip to California and went to work in the gold
mines as an experienced miner. He owned and operated mines there for ten
years, meeting with considerable success in his undertaking. He was only
seventeen years of age at the time he arrived at that state. He had had
practically no chance in his youth and could neither read nor write. Feeling
the necessity for education, he attended school for
one year and acquired a knowledge of some of the elementary branches of
learning, but later in the school of experience he has learned many valuable
lessons that have made him a practical business man and have brought him
considerable information of a general nature.
"In Sacramento,
in 1864, Mr. Jones enlisted as a soldier of the Union Army, became a member of
Company A of the Second California Volunteer Cavalry. He was bugler of
his regiment, with which he went to Southern California
to quell the riots in that part of the country. He was in the service for
nearly two years and was mustered out at San
Francisco, where he was also honorably
discharged. Mr. Jones then returned to Sacramento
for three months after which he went to Panama, in 1866. He paid
twenty-five dollars to ride forty-seven miles across the Isthmus, then to
Havana where he spent a few days, after which he booked passage for New York,
whence he returned to Chicago by way of Canada, and then to Newton, Iowa,
November 1866. There he engaged in digging coal for three years, after which he
returned to Des Moines
and operated a coal bank there. He was also prominent in community affairs and
served for two years as a supervisor. On his removal to Warren County,
he settled near Summerset, where he operated a mine for thirty-two years,
opening it up and carrying on the work of taking the mineral from the soil and
placing it on the market. When almost one-third of a century had thus passed he
came to Indianola and established a coal business in 1887.
"On the 10th of April, 1870 (1869), in Des
Moines, Iowa, Mr. Jones was united
in marriage to Miss Mary E. Milligan, a native of Ohio,
who was reared, however in Jasper
County, Iowa, where
her father, Robert M. Milligan, located in November 1855. Unto Mr. and
Mrs. Jones have been born five sons and four daughters: Alvin K., who married
Hattie Fisk, by whom he has four children, is now living on his father's farm
near Lacona; George, a carriage painter, of
Tama, Iowa, married Laura Belle Miller and they have one child; Anna is the
wife of John Reddish, a farmer of Lincoln Township and they have two children;
Harry, who married Maude Geneva Goodrich, is a farmer of Parke County, Iowa;
Stella May is the wife of John Prather, of Indianola and they have one child;
Charles and Luella are at home; Evelyn is the wife of Moody Krell,
a resident of Pueblo, Colorado; and Frank Worth is now attending school.
"Mr. Jones has been a lifelong Republican, yet does not
feel himself bound to party ties in local elections. He is a member of the
Grand Army of the Republic
of Indianola and was for
years a member of the Independent Order of the Odd Fellows. The family attended
the Friends Church, to which Mrs. Jones belongs.
Mr. Jones is one of the old settlers of Iowa
and an honored veteran of the Civil War. Coming to America a mere boy,
untutored and uneducated, having worked in the mines of Wales from his early
youth, he made his way across the country, labored in the gold fields of
California and made and lost a fortune in gold mining. He has opened up
and developed coal mines in Iowa
and for ten years has been a coal merchant in Indianola. He has not only
won progress in a material way, but has made substantial advancement in
educational lines and in character building and justly merits the respect,
esteem, and confidence which are uniformly accorded him wherever he is
known."1
Daniel Jones is listed as voting in the first
election of Jefferson Township, Madison
County, in 1858.4 There is a DK Jones listed as farmer, section 28,
P.O. Summerset.2
1. Rev. W.C.
Martin, D.D., “History of Warren County,
Iowa, From Its Earliest Settlement to
1908,” Chicago: The SJ Clarke
Publishing Co., 1908, Pp. 899-901. Daniel K. Jones died
11 November 1908 and was buried at the IOOF Cemetery
in Indianola, Warren County, Iowa.
