James Jones

Biography

Life summary. James Jones reportedly left Weston for North Carolina around 1748 with a son, leaving his wife Abigail and other family connections in Massachusetts. Later inheritance and estate records show property interests continuing there, but his precise death date and Carolina history remain uncertain.

Around 1748, according to William Blake Trask’s family history, James Jones left Weston, Massachusetts, for North Carolina with his second son, also James. The son was about seventeen. The father was reported never to have returned. This divided the family’s geography, placing one part of its history in Carolina while the later Massachusetts estate records remained concerned with land, a house and the rights of his wife Abigail. ^595-1

James was a son of Captain James Jones and Sarah Moore. He married Abigail Garfield in December 1728. Their children included Lemuel, James, Abigail, Eunice, Sarah, Jonathan and Solomon. Weston lay west of Boston, in a farming landscape where roads, fields, meadow and agricultural buildings linked a household to its neighbors. The elder James held town office and land interests; the younger man’s family belonged to the same community before the reported departure. ^595-1595-3

Henry Bond’s nineteenth-century genealogy described discord between James and Abigail as preceding the move. That is an attributed explanation from a later family historian, not testimony from either spouse. The precise destination within Carolina, route and circumstances of their separation remain uncertain. ^595-2

His father’s will of 1753 refers to land already given to James and adds twenty shillings to his portion. It separately assigns £7 each to James’s children Solomon and Sarah, subject to age or marriage conditions. These clauses connect the younger family to resources remaining in Massachusetts after the reported move. They do not, by naming James, conclusively establish that he was still alive in 1753. ^595-1

In 1782, decades after the reported departure, a committee was appointed to appraise James’s Weston real estate and allocate Abigail’s widow’s share. It valued ninety-seven acres with a dwelling house, barn and cider house at £600. The property attributed to his Massachusetts estate provided a resource from which his wife’s interest could be set out. ^595-1

The committee’s return, dated December 27, 1782, was approved on March 12, 1783. It divided interests in the estate while preserving access needed to use the buildings and land. James had died by these proceedings, but the earlier accounts differ over when. The reported Carolina departure and the much later Massachusetts settlement mark the two ends of a family separation whose intervening history remains incomplete. ^595-1