Fred Charles Jones (1887-1948)

JONES, BROOKS, CALHOUN

Posted By: Dorian Myhre (email)
Date: 6/13/2020 at 12:59:04

From Nevada Evening Journal November 26, 1948 (page 1)

Fred Jones, State Plowing Champion, 61, Dies Near Colo

COLO -- Funeral services will be held at 2:30 p.m. Sunday for Fred C. Jones, 62-year-old prominent farmer who died suddenly Wednesday afternoon while driving on his way to a neighborly husking bee.

Last rites for the man who won the state plowing championship in 1946 will be conducted at the Colo Methodist church by the Rev. A. D. Steffenson of Des Moines. Burial will be in the Colo cemetery.

The body is being returned today from the Brouhard funeral home at Zearing and will lie in state at the Jones residence southwest of Colo until Sunday afternoon.

Jones was on his way to help a large group of farmers pick corn on the Merle Moser farm whose owner died of polio this fall. Mrs. Moser is still in a Des Moines hospital with the same disease.

Went Blind

Jones had complained at noon of his sight being bad, but started with his tractor and picker for the Moser farm. He had driven to the side of the road and stopped near the gate into the field. He got off the tractor when his daughter-in-law, Mrs. Herbert Jones, came along in a car and stopped. The man told her he could not see her or the car.

Mrs. Jones returned home and brought her husband who took Jones to a doctor and then back home. The family was called and Jones was then being taken to St. Thomas Mercy hospital in Marshalltown but died while enroute in an ambulance. Margaret Harding of Colo, a registered nurse, was in the ambulance when the man died. His death was attributed to a cerebral hemorrhage.

Son of Pioneers

Fred Jones was the son of Mr. and Mrs. Amos Jones, pioneer Colo residents. His father died in July and his mother passed away in August 1947. He was born at Richardson, Ill., and come with his parents to the Colo community when about two year old. He lived in this vicinity since that time except for a few years in Missouri and Illinois.

He became widely known as a progressive farmer an thresherman.

The highlight of his career came in 1946 when he won the state plowing championship in Marion county. His son, Herbert won the state meet this fall at Dexter and the pair was honored recently at Colo dinner attended by 100 friends.

Jones had been farming the Sam White farm which was sold recently at an auction, and was to have moved to the George Neidert farm next March.

Surviving Jones are his wife, the former Mary Ann Brooks whom he married 38 years and one day before he died, one daughter, Mrs. John (Eloise) Calhoun, Maxwell; two sons, Herbert L., Colo, and Everette, Nevada; six grandchildren, three brothers, four sisters, and a host of other relatives and friends.

One son, Vernon, died in 1939.