Individual Biography

John Jr. Jones

• Formal Name:
• First Date: 1808
• Last Date: 1808
• Function: Publisher
• Locales: Abingdon
• Precis: Publisher of Baptist religious tract (1808) through Abingdon press of John G. Ustick (421).
• Notes: Publisher
  Abingdon
  Publisher of Baptist religious tract (1808) through Abingdon press of John G. Ustick (421).
  Jones was a Baptist minister in Washington County, who founded the Rush Creek Primitive Baptist Church in the Widener's Valley community of Chilhowie in 1812. He was the son of a like-named Baptist minister from North Caroline, and dropped the appended "Jr." after his father's death in 1825. He is seen frequently in the Washington County marriage records after 1812, indicating his permanence there, but several secondary sources suggest that he had been an itinerant preacher before that time. Jones evidently retired from his ministry in 1835, about a year before his death; he was buried nearby his church in a grave now lost.
  Jones undertook his only publishing venture In 1808, privately contracting John Gano Ustick to print a collection of sermons on The Mode and Subject of Baptism by Daniel Merritt. The work was the result of controversies unleashed by Merritt (1765-1833) among Baptists in Maine over his refusal to conduct infant baptisms there, as such were not sanctioned by the gospels; for Merritt, adult baptisms, voluntarily embraced upon conversion, were the only legitimate form of the sacrament. Jones evidently agreed with Merritt, as evinced by his ensuing role in establishing a Primitive Baptist congregation, a denomination that openly embraces an adult baptism ritual.
  
  
  Personal Data
  
  Born:
  In
  1770
  Wilkes County, North Carolina.
  
  Married:
  July 18
  1802
  Patience Main @ Washington Co., Va. (d. 1828)
  
  Married:
  ca.
  1829
  Elizabeth [???] @ Washington County, Virginia.
  
  Died:
  May 28
  1836
  Washington County, Virginia.
  Children:
  Rachel (b. 1804); another daughter died in infancy.
  
  Sources: Imprint; Marriages of Washington County; History of Washington District Regular Primitive Baptist Association; Millett's History of the Baptists in Maine.
  
• Related Bios:
  • John Gano Ustick

This version of the Index of Virginia Printing was a gift from the estate of the site's creator, David Rawson. The content contained herein will not be updated, as it is part of the Library of Virginia's personal papers collection. For more information, please see David Rawson Index of Virginia Printing website. Accession 53067. Personal papers collection, The Library of Virginia, Richmond, Virginia .