Jones Family Papers

Access and use

Location of collection:
University of Virginia, Special Collections Dept.
Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library
University of Virginia
P.O. Box 400110
160 McCormick Rd
Charlottesville, Virginia 22904-4110
Contact for questions and access:
POC: Brenda Gunn
Phone: (434) 924-1037
Phone: (434) 243-1776
Fax: (434) 924-4968
Restrictions:

This collection has been minimally processed and is open for research.

Preferred citation:

MSS 16957, Jones Family Papers, Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia Library.

Summary

Extent:
1.11 Cubic Feet 1 large oversize flat box; 1 legal document box; 1 custom artifact enclosure; 1 object in stacks artifact range
Creator:
Jones, Winfield Scott, 1843-1902
Language:
English
Preferred citation:

MSS 16957, Jones Family Papers, Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia Library.

Background

Scope and content:

This collection documents five generations of the Jones family, a Virginia military family, through commissions, correspondence, printed military orders, and personal artifacts. Most of the materials consists of military commissions, appointments, and presidential correspondence directed to Roger Jones (1789–1852), the longest-serving Adjutant General of the United States Army, with the bound commission volume documenting his career from his initial 1809 Marine Corps appointment through his death in office in 1852. A one page autograph letter from Edmund P. Gaines (1777-1849) to Roger Jones, dated March 2, 1828 and postmarked in Washington City is included. The letter commends Jones for "his untiring vigilant gallantry and meritorious service in the Battle for which it was granted to his General and constant friend." On the verso of the page is a written indication of Jones's receipt of the letter the same day. Gaines was a senior commander in the United States Army and served in the War of 1812, the Seminole Wars, the Black Hawk Wars, and the later Mexican-American War. Jones served under Gaines during the British attempt to retake Fort Erie during the War of 1812. Other named recipients of commissions include the Revolutionary-era patriarch Catesby Jones (c. 1730–1800) (Virginia militia commissions, 1785–1794); his sons Roger Jones and Thomas ap Catesby Jones (1790–1858), U.S. Navy commodore; Roger Jones's sons William Page Jones (1820–1841), Catesby ap Roger Jones (1821–1877), Walter Jones, and Charles Lucian Jones (1835–1920); and the third-generation Catesby ap Lucian Jones, who received four officer's appointments in the U.S. Coast Artillery Corps, 1917–1918.

Signers of commissions and correspondence include Virginia governors Patrick Henry, Beverly Randolph, and Henry Lee III; Presidents Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, John Tyler, James K. Polk, Zachary Taylor, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, and Andrew Johnson; Confederate Secretary of the Navy Stephen R. Mallory; Secretaries of War John C. Calhoun, James Barbour, Lewis Cass, Joel R. Poinsett, William L. Marcy, Jefferson Davis, John B. Floyd, and Edwin M. Stanton; and Generals Winfield Scott, Jacob Brown, Alexander Macomb, William J. Worth, and Peter B. Porter. Ten autograph letters from Winfield Scott to Roger Jones, dated 1818 to 1855, form a notable correspondence series and document the close working relationship between Scott as senior field commander and Jones as Adjutant General across the War of 1812, the Second Seminole War, the Mexican-American War, and the early Civil War years.

Subject content ranges across the United States' principal military engagements from the Revolutionary War through World War II, with particular density on the War of 1812 (engagements at Chippewa, Niagara, and Fort Erie), the Mexican-American War, and the American Civil War as experienced from both Union (Roger Jones, Inspector General; Catesby ap Lucian Jones) and Confederate (Catesby ap Roger Jones, who commanded the ironclad CSS Virginia on the second day of action against the USS Monitor at Hampton Roads; Charles Lucian Jones, Confederate Navy paymaster aboard the ironclad CSS Tennessee) perspectives. Geographic coverage centers on Washington, D.C., Richmond, and the Virginia Tidewater, with secondary points of correspondence in Elizabethtown and Brownville, New York, Baltimore, Concord, New Hampshire, and the Mexican theater of war.

Notable individual items include a United States Military Academy diploma issued to William Page Jones in 1840; an 1841 War Department announcement of the death of President William Henry Harrison; an undated holograph note from Andrew Jackson; a manuscript volume of funeral orders kept and signed by Roger Jones as Adjutant General (1826, 1845–1849); a 1907 United Confederate Veterans membership certificate for Charles Lucian Jones; an 1830 invitation to a "May Ball" at L. Carusi's Washington Saloon; the Auguste Edouart cut-paper silhouette of Adjutant General Roger Jones, signed by both artist and subject and dated 16 June 1841; a quarter-plate daguerreotype of Roger Jones, ca. 1840s; and the embossed belt and engraved brass buckle presented to Roger Jones at Richmond in February 1841 in recognition of his War of 1812 service.

Biographical / historical:

The Jones family of Virginia produced six generations of professional military officers in U.S. and Confederate service, from the Revolutionary War through the Second World War. Several members of the family bore the Welsh patronymic "ap," meaning "son of," between their given name and their father's name, a survival of the family's Welsh ancestry through the seventeenth-century Virginia immigrant Captain Roger Jones of London.

Catesby Jones (c. 1730–1800) of Westmoreland County, Virginia, the earliest family member represented in the collection, served as a Virginia militia officer during and after the Revolutionary War, receiving successive commissions from governors Patrick Henry (1785), Beverly Randolph (1789), and Henry Lee III (1792, 1794). He married Lettice Corbin Turberville and was the father of Roger Jones and Thomas ap Catesby Jones.

His elder son, Roger Jones (1789–July 15, 1852), was born in Westmoreland County and is the central figure of the collection. He was commissioned a second lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps in January 1809, transferred to the U.S. Army as a captain of artillery in 1812, and earned brevets to major and lieutenant colonel for service in the War of 1812 — most notably for gallantry at the battles of Chippewa, Niagara, and the sortie at Fort Erie. He was appointed Adjutant General of the U.S. Army in March 1825 and held that position for twenty-seven years until his death in office, the longest tenure in the history of the office. He was breveted brigadier general in 1832 and major general in 1848, and was buried in the Congressional Cemetery in Washington. Roger Jones married Mary Ann Mason, a descendant of William Byrd II and Robert "King" Carter and a cousin of Robert E. Lee; the couple had thirteen children.

His younger brother, Commodore Thomas ap Catesby Jones (April 24, 1790–May 30, 1858), also born in Westmoreland County, entered the U.S. Navy as a midshipman in 1805. He was wounded and decorated for his command of the small American flotilla at the Battle of Lake Borgne in December 1814, where he delayed the British advance on New Orleans. Commanding the U.S. Pacific Squadron in 1842, he occupied Monterey, California, in the mistaken belief that the United States and Mexico were already at war; he was relieved but not censured. He died at "Sharon," his Fairfax County estate, in 1858.

Of Roger Jones's sons, four are represented in the Jones Family Papers collection. William Page Jones (1820–1841) graduated from the U.S. Military Academy in 1840 and died the following year. Catesby ap Roger Jones (April 15, 1821–1877), born at Fairfield Plantation in Frederick (now Clarke) County, Virginia, entered the U.S. Navy in 1836 and resigned his commission upon Virginia's secession in April 1861; as executive officer of the ironclad CSS Virginia, he took command of the ship on the second day of the Battle of Hampton Roads (March 9, 1862) after Captain Franklin Buchanan was wounded, fighting the USS Monitor in the first engagement between ironclad warships. Roger Jones (February 25, 1831–January 26, 1889) graduated from West Point in 1851 and rose to serve as Inspector General of the U.S. Army from 1888 until his death the following year; in April 1861, while commanding the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, he ordered the destruction of its weapons and stores rather than allow them to fall to advancing Virginia militia. Charles Lucian Jones (1835–1920) served as Assistant Paymaster in the Confederate Navy aboard the ironclad CSS Tennessee and remained active in United Confederate Veterans circles into the early twentieth century. A grandson, Catesby ap Lucian Jones, served as an officer in the U.S. Coast Artillery Corps during the First World War and continued in public service through the Second World War.

References

"Catesby ap Roger Jones." Wikipedia. Accessed April 27, 2026. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catesby_ap_Roger_Jones.

Jones, Lewis Hampton. Captain Roger Jones, of London and Virginia: Some of His Antecedents and Descendants. Albany, NY: Joel Munsell's Sons, 1891.

The Mariners' Museum and Park. "Commander Catesby ap Roger Jones." August 2024. https://www.marinersmuseum.org/2024/08/commander-catesby-ap-roger-jones/.

"Roger Jones (Adjutant General)." Wikipedia. Accessed April 27, 2026. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Jones_(adjutant_general).

"Roger Jones (Inspector General)." Wikipedia. Accessed April 27, 2026. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Jones_(inspector_general).

Smith, Gene A. Thomas ap Catesby Jones: Commodore of Manifest Destiny. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2000.

"Thomas ap Catesby Jones." Wikipedia. Accessed April 27, 2026. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_ap_Catesby_Jones.

Acquisition information:
This collection was a gift from Cynthia Kingsford and Alessandra Kingsford to the Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia on 25 April 2025 and 21 November 2025.
Physical description:
Fair. Some letters have tears.
Dimensions:
(oversize box) 19.5 X 25.5 X 3 inches
Rules or conventions:
Describing Archives: A Content Standard