Richard 'Peter' Jones was born 13 May 1816
to Edward Jones and Sarah Morris at Denbyshire, in
North Wales, and died in Samaria,
Idaho, 2 September 1889. his wife, Eliza Edwards, was born 16 September 1816 at Brymbo Lodge, Wrexham, North
Wales, the daughter of Simon Edwards and Elizabeth (Betsan)
Jones and died in Malad,
Idaho, 15 November 1896. She was
buried beside her husband in the Malad Idaho
Cemetery. They were the
parents of ten children.
Richard heard about and joined the Mormon Church
through the missionary Dan Jones. It was during the year 1856, that Richard P.
and Eliza Edwards Jones packed their belongings, gathered their family together
and immigrated to the United
States. At the time, they were living at Ruabon, North Wales. They
came with the Edward Parry's on the Samuel Curling. They left on April 19, 1856, from Liverpool,
England and arrived in America
on May 23, 1856, at Boston,
Massachusetts. After arriving in
this country, they had the misfortune of losing two members of their family, Margaret
and Louis, as they were immigrating toward the West.
Their first
residence was established at Williamsburg,
Iowa, where a little over a year
later their youngest child, William Richard, was born. They remained at Williamsburg for four
years, but the lure of the West, with its
glamour of gold strikes and fortunes, was too much of a temptation to Richard
P. Jones, who was an expert mineralogist and metallurgist. His fervent desire
was to go to the west and see what would fall his lot. In the Spring of 1861, they continued on their journey toward the
Rocky Mountains and the Salt
Lake Valley.
The following winter they spent at Provo,
Utah.
The following spring their son, Amos, was married
to Leah Parry of Salt Lake and went to Salt Lake City to make his home. Their daughter, Joice. was also married about the same time to David Thomas of Provo and remained in Provo
to make her home while the rest of the family prepared journey on toward the Sierra Nevada Mountains
stopped for a short time in Jacks
Valley, ada. but later went to Silver City, Nevada,
re thes established their residence. It was that Mr.
Jones staked out "The Pride of the West" mining claim, which still remains a desertedmine in the Silver City
area today. The little white school house up on the hill in Silver City
was where Sarah, Isaac and William Richard went to school, but it has since
been torn down.
In 1864, Mr. Jones went to Oreana, Nevada,
and erected the first smelter known in the western part of the United States.
Charcoal was used in the smelter, and the bullion was shipped to Swansea, Wales,
for refining. It was hauled by ox team over the Sierra
Nevada Mountains to San Francisco and loaded
on boats.
After completing this smelter, the family
again moved back to Silver
City. They did not remain
there very long before the moved to Virginia City,
which was only a few miles distant. Mr. Jones again interested
himself in the mining game. He was living in Virginia City
during the days when "Fair, Flood and O'Brian" made the famous strike
in the Comstock district. In those days, the Miner's Union
was the law. The outlaw element, known as "Bushwhakers,"
was a low class composed mostly of Southerners who were against anything that
was in line with law and order. They were especially anti-unionist. The family lived
there during the Civil War days and was living there when Abraham Lincoln was
assassinated. Some of the Bushwhakers were present in
the famous old "Crystal Bar" Saloon when news of Lincoln's assassination was brought to the
city. Their slighting remarks of Lincoln
caused the President of the Labor Union to walk forward, take a whip from one
of the mule skinners present and whip the bushwhacker until his blood ran down
into his shoes. Those were the days when Virginia City
was at its best. It was one of the liveliest towns in the western country with
plenty of money in circulation and fortunes being made overnight.
In the year 1867, the family moved to Eureka, Nevada,
where Mr. Jones again founded a smelter for Colonel Buhl and Mr. Bateman. He
remained there to operate the smelter over a period of about three years.
Thomas Lilly, his son-in-law, operated a smelter a short distance from his, and
Richard was called from one smelter to the other whenever anything went wrong.
In 1871, Brigham Young sent for Richard P.
Jones to come to Salt Lake and requested that he make an examination of the
iron deposits in southern Utah near Cedar City.
Mr. Jones went to Cedar
City, as requested by
Brigham Young, but could not make a favorable report of the project due to the
high cost of production. He did tell Brigham Young that the time would come
when the country was more developed with railroad facilities, etc., that the
iron deposits would become valuable to them. It was too far distant at that
time, as they could not compete with the eastern iron mines. The Jones family remained
in Salt Lake
and erected the smelter at Murray,
Utah. It was there that Richard
P. Jones lost his fortune.
In 1876 the family moved to what is known as
"The Point," at Samaria,
Idaho, and tried their luck as
farmers. There they lived happily, and humbly, as did the other pioneer
residents of the locality. They did not have as many of the worldly goods that
they had been used to prior to coming here, but the peace and contentment that
comes from living close to nature was theirs until the end of their days.
Submitted by: Marcia
Evans Daugherty
Post script by Raymond Evans, G Grandson:
Richard Peter Jones, after he moved to Malad, surveyed the Samaria
Lake and Portage Canal
and supervised its construction. Being a mining man, Richard prospected and did
some mining south of the Samaria
Mountain with his son
Amos, until the early 1880's when his health failed.
Richard Jones
was in partnership with a man named Raymond, and I was named after him. They
built the first smelter in the Salt Lake Valley, in Murray.
They used ore from the Big
Cottonwood Canyon.
When the railroad was built to Park
City, it put them out of
business.
