MR. GRIFFITH PRICHARD JONES. EMPORIA, LYON COUNTY, KANSAS.
Walter A. Jones. Son of Griffith P. Jones gives excellent history of Griffith Jones Family.The following data is extracted from A Standard History of Kansas and Kansans.
Walter A. Jones is judge of the Probate Court of Lyon County and represents one of the very first families in Lyon County and in that section of Kansas. Both he and other members of the family have accounted well for themselves in the business, farming, professional and civic life of the county.
His father, Griffith P. Jones, formerly a merchant at Emporia, is one of the most extensive raisers and breeders of Hereford cattle in Lyon County. He was born in Carnarvonshire, Wales, in 1847, a son of John and Jeanette Jones. John Jones was born in Carnarvonshire, Wales, and spent his life there on the farm which his ancestors had occupied for fully three centuries before him. After his death his widow Jeanette Jones, in 1852, brought her family to America, landing in New York City and afterwards going to Lewis County, New York.
She married for her second husband Richard Humphries, and in 1880 they came to Emporia, where she died. Griffith P. Jones, who was five years old when brought to America, lived in New York State during his youth and in 1868 at the age of twenty-one arrived in Lyon County, Kansas. Emporia was then a village, and for four years he was employed by the firm of Bancroft and McCarty, merchants. He then established the G. P. Jones Clothing Store which is still in operation at 508 Commercial Street, being now owned by his nephew, George R. Jones.
After continuing in the clothing business until 1888, he sold out his mercantile enterprise and removed to the Hereford Ranch which he still owned and which comprises 1,500 acres of land in Lyon County. The Hereford Ranch had become widely known as the home of blooded Hereford cattle. It is a matter of interest that a brother of Griffith Jones, John C. Jones, was a schoolmate of Lloyd George, the noted English statesman. Griffith Jones is a republican, a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and is a charter member of Union Lodge No. 15, Independent Order of Odd Fellows at Emporia. He married Abbie C. Allen, who was born at Turin, Lewis County, New York, in 1856. Their children are: A. C. Jones, who lives on a dairy farm two miles north of Emporia; Edward G., who operates his ranch of 400 acres near the Hereford Ranch in the southwestern part of Lyon County; Walter A.; and Lucina, at home with her parents.
Find a Grave.
MR. GRIFFITH PRICHARD JONES. EMPORIA, LYON COUNTY, KANSAS.
Griffith Pritchard Jones was born in Caernarvonshire, North Wales, in 1847. In 1852 he came to Remsen, New York, where there was a large Welsh settlement. He wanted to go farther west, so he came to Lyon county in the spring of 1869 and worked in a grocery store. A merchant who had recently come from Columbus, Ohio, was opening a clothing store in Emporia and found that a great many of his customers spoke only Welsh. Griffith Jones was hired as a salesman and also interpreter.In 1871 he persuaded a brother, John Cornelius Jones, to come to Emporia and the two of them went into the men's clothing business, opening the G. P. Jones and Company store.
In 1886 Griffith Jones bought 480 acres of school land on which to raise cattle.