Jones, Daniel K.

JONES

Posted By: Karon Velau (email)
Date: 6/29/2021 at 12:42:50

History of Warren County, Iowa from Its Earliest Settlement to 1908, by Rev. W. C. Martin, Clarke Publishing Co., Chicago, Illinois, 1908, p.899

DANIEL K. JONES
For thirty-seven years Daniel K. Jones has been a resident of Warren County and is a veteran coal dealer of Indianola. He has lived in Iowa since 1852. The state had only a few years before been admitted to the Union and there were still vast tracts of territory unclaimed and uncultivated. Mr. Jones has lived to witness a remarkable transformation here as through
successive stages of growth and progress Iowa has reached a place among the leading states of the Union.
A native of Wales, Mr. Jones was born August 4, 1840. His father, Henry, who was likewise born in that country was a coal miner by trade and was also a preacher in the church of the Latter Day Saints. His wife, Mrs. Anna Jones, died in Wales in 1850, leaving D. K. Jones the only child. In the year 1852 the father and son came to America, the latter being then a youth of twelve years. They crossed from Liverpool to New Orleans on a sailing vessel, requiring them eight weeks to make the trip, for the winds died down and for some time they were becalmed and could make no progress. Even­tually, however, they reached their destination in safety and proceeded north­ward to Keokuk, Iowa, and thence to Van Buren County, where they lived for one year, the father engaging in preaching there. It was the intention of the father to go to Salt Lake City and join the colony of Latter Day Saints at that point.
D. K. Jones then left his father and went to the lead mines in Franklin County, Missouri, where he worked for two years and in 1856 be­came a resident of Atchison, Kansas. He hired out as a cattle and freight driver across the plains and made one trip, after which he took the long journey across the plains to California. The wagon train with which he traveled was attacked by hundreds of Indians on the Humboldt River in Nevada and two of the party were killed. Mr. Jones was then but sixteen years of age. However, he managed to make his escape from the Indians and proceeding on his way he walked one hundred and seventy miles in seven days with nothing to eat. With some of his comrades of the party he also walked across the desert of forty miles, to Carson River, and then too late to cross the mountains as they could not make their way through the passes in the winter, they remained there and Mr. Jones worked for his board. There were only five families in that valley at the time. In the following spring he continued his trip to California and went to work in the gold mines as an experienced miner. He owned and operated mines there for ten years, meeting with considerable success in his undertaking. He was only seventeen years of age at the time he arrived in that state. He had had practically no chance in his youth and could neither read nor write. Feeling the necessity for education, he at­tended school for one year and acquired a knowledge of some of the elemen­tary branches of learning, but later in the school of experience he has learned many valuable lessons that have made him a practical business man and have brought him considerable information of a general character.
In Sacramento, in 1864, Mr. Jones enlisted as a soldier of the Union army, became a member of Company A of the Second California Volunteer Cavalry. He was bugler of his regiment, with which he went to southern California to quell the riots in that part of the country. He was in the service for nearly two years and was mustered out at San Francisco, where he was also honorably discharged. Mr. Jones then returned to Sacramento for three months after which he went to Panama, in 1866. He paid twenty-five dollars to ride forty-seven miles across the isthmus, then to Havana where he spent a few days, after which he took passage for New York, whence he returned to Chicago by way of Canada, and then to Newton, Iowa, November 1866. There he engaged in digging coal for three years, after which he returned to Des Moines and operated a coal bank there. He was also prominent in com­munity affairs and served for two years as supervisor. On his removal to Warren County he settled near Summerset, where he operated a mine for thirty-two years, opening it up and carrying on the work of taking the mineral from the soil and placing it on the market. When almost one-third of a century had thus passed he came to Indianola and established a coal business in 1897.
He is one of the oldest representatives of the coal trade in this part of the state and has led a very active and busy life. He has also owned two or three farms and throughout his business career he has manifested that unfalter­ing diligence which is the basis of all success.
On the 10th of April 1870, in Des Moines, Iowa, Mr. Jones was united in marriage to Miss Mary E. Milligan, a native of Ohio, who was reared, however, in Jasper County, Iowa, where her father, Robert M., located in 1850. Unto Mr. and Mrs. Jones have been born five sons and four daughters: Alvin K., who married Hattie Frisk, by whom he has four children, is now living on his father's farm near Lacona; George, a carriage-maker, of Tama, Iowa, married Bell Miller and they have one child; Anna is the wife of John Reddish, a farmer of Lincoln Township and they have two children; Harry, who married Miss Goodrich, is a farmer of Polk county, Iowa; Stella May, is the wife of John Prather, of Indianola and they have one child; Charles and Luella are at home ; Evelyn is the wife of Moody Krell, a resident of Pueblo, Colorado ; and Frank Worth is now attending school.
Mr. Jones has been a lifelong Republican, yet does not feel himself bound to party ties in local elections. He is a member of the Grand Army of the Repub­lic of Indianola and was for years a member of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows. The family attends the Friends Church, to which Mrs. Jones belongs. Mr. Jones is one of the old settlers of Iowa and an honored veteran of the Civil War. Coming to America a mere boy, untutored and uneducated, having worked in the mines of Wales from his early youth, he made his way across the country, labored in the gold fields of California and made and lost a fortune in gold mining. He has opened up and developed coal mines in Iowa and for ten years has been a coal merchant of Indianola. He has not only won progress in a material way, but has made substantial advancement in educa­tional lines and in character building and justly merits the respect, esteem and confidence which are uniformly accorded him wherever he is known.