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MILLARD W. JONES, for some years a resident of Vinton, is one of the strongest and most active members of the management which has brought the Iowa Canning Company to such a high pitch of prosperity and industrial success. He is not only a member of its board of directors, but is manager of the company's entire business. Superintends the cultivation of the thousand acres from which are raised the raw products manufactured by the company. A tract of six hundred acres is alone devoted to the raising of sweet corn. It should be needless to add, in view of the magnitude of these operations, that Mr. Jones' entire time is absorbed in their management and furtherance.
Born near Rochester, New York, in 1867, Millard W. Jones was brought by his parents to Jackson township when he was three years old. At that time Zardus Jones, the father, commenced farming on the present site of the town of Garrison, but he died within a year thereafter, his widow surviving him until about ten years ago. The Jones farm embraced what is now the southern part of the town. Two sons and a daughter of the family are still living — a son in Kansas and a daughter in Cedar county, Iowa — Millard W. being the only resident of Benton county. The latter obtained his education in the Garrison schools and the Tilford Academy, having been self-supporting and independent since his youth. For ten years he acted as a traveling salesman for a Milwaukee saddlery house, but in 1900 returned to Garrison and, with J. S. Stanley (now of Colorado) and E. E. Manhard (of Waterloo), established the business of which he is still the prime mover.
Mr. Stanley, also one of the founders of the enterprise, is warmly remembered as a pioneer merchant who came to Benton county forty years ago and conducted a store for some time in Vinton. He then retired to his farm in Jackson township until 1898, when he moved to Garrison, where he remained until 1902. Having been of great service in the establishment of the Iowa Canning Company, in the year mentioned he located on his ranch in Wyoming, but now resides at Fort Collins, Colorado. Mr. Stanley was an active Democrat and a leader of both business and public affairs, serving several terms as supervisor of Benton county and being a prominent candidate for congress. The Stanley family is of Ohio ancestry.
Mr. Jones' wife (nee Mary E. Stanley) is a daughter of J. S. Stanley and his wife, the latter of whom died in 1905. Mr. and Mrs. Jones have two children: Horace Stanley, now a pupil in the Vinton high school, and Kathryn, aged six years. The family is pleasantly located in a beautiful home near the academy, the residence having been purchased by Mr. Jones not long ago. Both he and his wife attend and faithfully support the Presbyterian church, and the former is also active and popular among the Masons and Knights of Pythias; as a Mason he is a member of the Blue Lodge, Chapter and Commandery of Vinton.
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