James LLOYD-JONES

March 15, 1850 - October 22, 1907

Over one hundred years ago, a small bridge gave way in our Valley, sending a threshing machine and its tender to the bottom of a dry creek bed and scalding to death the two men riding on top.

This was the beginning of the end of our family’s clan in the Valley of the God-Almighty Joneses. 

Racing to the scene, intent upon rescue, rushed James Lloyd Jones, 57 years old, the first American-born son of Richard and Mallie. The trapped and scalded men were his neighbors—his friends—and thoughts of personal peril faded as he sought to snatch them from the steam.

Instead, a foot slipped on the precariously tilted machine and a leg jammed and snapped. The rescuer needed rescuing. The others were beyond help.

The break, while bad, seemed mendable, but shock soon overtook the strong, virile body and within three days “Uncle James” was gone. The shock to his wife and seven children reverberated throughout the valley. Uncle James! Gone! It was unthinkable!

October 24, 1907 Spring Green Home News

DIES FROM HIS INJURY

Death of James Ll. Jones: He died Oct. 22 about 2:00 in the afternoon. Universal sorrow. Known throughout this portion of Wisconsin and highly respected by men, women and children. The accident occurred Oct. 16 at the little bridge near his home at Hillside. Two others lost their lives when the bridge collapsed. James rushed to their aid but they were already gone. Standing on the engine, his foot slipped, causing him to break his leg. He never revived from his coma.

That James would die in an effort to save others was very much in character. This was a man of vision, integrity, and passion. He loved his family; loved the Valley. His life was spent seeking to improve the lot and lives of others. He spent many years as Treasurer of the Town of Wyoming Valley, and eight years as Chairman of its Board of Supervisors. He was president of the Tri-County Fair, endeavoring to raise its activities above “the games of chance and exhibits of vulgarity.” He was a trustee of the County Asylum for the mentally ill, a member of the Board of Regents of the University, a tireless supporter, promoter, and farm superintendent of his sisters’ Hillside Home School. Is there a wonder that he was loved as a leader and exemplar?

He was also a devoted family man. His own wife and children adored him, and he was “Uncle James” to all the Hillside children and his many nieces and nephews.  

Second only to his allegiance to his family was his love for the land and his role as a farmer. Such a role in turn-of-the-century America was filled with hardship, accident, and loss. His greatest loss was as a father. Son Paul, the sixth of eight children, lived less than a year and was mourned by his parents for the rest of their lives. The remaining children grew up in a farmer’s world, nurtured with love and hard work. 

The pages of the Home News tell a tale of hardship and hazard:

Nov. 29th, 1888: Jas. Ll. Jones of Wyoming Valley sustained what may have proven a very serious injury last Friday. While assisting to move a building on his farm he was standing on an elevated plank used as a lever when it broke, causing him to fall about 8 feet with the small of his back across a timber. He was unconscious for about 5 hours.

Sept. 12th, 1889: While Jas. Ll. Jones of Wyoming Valley was driving a bunch of cattle to the Spring Green market on Monday last, they stampeded and ran over him, bruising him considerably. Mr. Jones seems to be very unlucky of late.

March 9th, 1893: One of the teams, through accident, backed into the open race of the river, falling into fifteen feet of water, taking with them the sled partly loaded with ice. It was with the greatest difficulty that Mr. James L. Jones, with his presence of mind, rescued the horses with no apparent injury.

December 21st, 1899: James Ll. Jones of Hillside is a sufferer from pneumonia, but his condition is improving.

April 25th, 1901: James L. Jones was over Tuesday morning and had a piece of iron taken from one of his eyes. It was a small particle that came from a plow he was fixing.

Life as a farmer had its perils, but for those with a farmer’s calling its challenges were exceeded by its satisfactions. Indeed, exposure to Uncle James and his farm changed one nephew’s entire life—a change that would ultimately and hugely impact the Valley and the world.

Sister Anna’s boy Frank was sent to Uncle James for several summers. There he rose at four in the morning, struggled with a city boy’s sloth, learned to “add tired to tired and then add tired,” and developed a deep, abiding, transformative love for the Valley of the God-Almighty Joneses. Some years after the death of James, when the boy Frank Lloyd Wright had become a man and an architect, he fled to the Valley he had grown to love as a boy with his lady love, leaving his wife and children in Chicago. It was a scandal!

That’s when the Valley itself began to change. The financial situation at Hillside Home School, already precarious, saw enrollment decline until the school failed. It would probably have folded anyway, for like the rest of the family farms, the school was land proud and purse poor, a partial legacy of James the visionary. 

James had led and encouraged his brothers and sisters to reach out, to dare to go beyond the safe and simple. He had seen that money was to be made in land and, with his siblings’ signatures as collateral, he had bought farm after farm. He could not anticipate a nationwide recession; could not imagine that land, crop, and livestock prices would plummet. When they did, he fought with every fiber to keep his—and his siblings’—heads above water. And then came the bridge, the plunge, the death.

Had James lived, he might have pulled it out. He was so widely respected, so trusted by his creditors and colleagues, the time might have come when he could wait out the tough times and win again. But he didn’t live, and the foreclosures began. Each of the family farms was impacted, and the reluctant family exodus commenced.

The fracture that sent James’ body into a coma was severe, but healable. Was Maginel Wright Barney correct in her speculation that his killer was not fractured bone, but bone-deep despair?

From a century’s distance, we can look back on this man and applaud with whole hearts his outstanding humanity and depth of character. What an amazing success he was, despite the angst of his last years.

In Memoriam (from the Hillside Home School 1910 yearbook):

James Lloyd-Jones

The school sustained a severe loss three years ago thru the death of its dear “Uncle James,” who had been for fifteen years its farm superintendent and its presiding genius of cheery good-will and joyous helpfulness.

One night in October James Lloyd-Jones was summoned, as was usual in cases of dire distress, to the scene of a fatal accident on the highway. In his efforts to rescue the imprisoned victims he sustained an injury to the spine, which resulted, four days after, in his death. His life was ever dominated by the spirit of helpfulness and thru it he met his death, giving his life as an offering heroic. The remains were laid to rest in the chapel yard amid the full glory of an October day. To the impressive burial words of his brother Jenkin were added those of beautiful tribute, by President Van Hise in behalf of the University that was suffering the loss of a valued regent; of Prof. Henry in behalf of the Agricultural College, and of Ex-Governor Hoard in behalf of the Board of Regents. The feelings of the faculty and pupils tried to find expression in the beautiful floral tributes that were everywhere in evidence.

Circumstance drove the family from the Valley, but succeeding generations have adjusted to the change and the original sense of loss is gone. So let us look at the man, James, as a dynamic, imaginative, hardworking, ethical, loving, caring man of integrity. By any moral standard his life was a success.       

At the funeral service at Unity Chapel ex-governor W. D. Hoard said, "He always had his face to the sunrise, and when the sunset overtook him he was not looking that way, but . . . was gazing upon the future . . . Oh he was a staunch man! a staunch man! God laid the lines of his structure in the nurture and admonition of his law, and he lived that way.”

And his brother, Jenkin, added: “. . . he has left the community a little more humane, an ever-widening circle of love and righteousness, and life is a little more in touch with integrity and nobility for his testimony and witness . . . Whatever the eternal years have in store, they must have welcome and hospitality for such a man.”

—Mary Frederickson & Georgia L. J. Snoke