John Jones held many positions in Natick and inspired the character “Squire Jones” in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel,
Oldtown Folks
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John Jones
Samuel Jones created this plan of “Natick Township” in 1716. In 1746 John Jones added to the map on the border of South Natick and Dedham. (NHS Collections)
Born in Weston, Massachusetts, in 1716, John Jones was the oldest son of John and Mehitable (Garfield) Jones. He claimed ancestors among the earliest and most highly connected settlers in the Massachusetts Bay Colony through his mother. He married twice and had 10 children, all baptized in the South Natick meetinghouse.
Jones bought a farm about a mile from Pegan Hill in 1740, in the Elm Bank area of a western extremity of what was then Dedham and now is the northern tip of Dover. The Charles River separated Jones’ farm (a “secluded retreat”) from Natick. The Massachusetts Horticultural Society now occupies the site of Jones’ farm.
Jones carried significant responsibilities in Natick as a teacher, militia colonel, judge, and deacon of Rev. Stephen Badger’s South Natick church. He actively participated in the dispossession of Indigenous Natick residents as a Guardian, surveyor, and administrator on Indigenous land sales and estates. In 1760, Jones succeeded Ebenezer Felch as the Indigenous Proprietors’ clerk and surveyor. He consulted on many land sales and determined and mapped the boundaries of properties. Jones’ maps became vital to the increasing number of English settlers purchasing land in Natick, often at the expense of Indigenous Natick residents. Under commission from the British crown, Jones became well known for his maps of Natick, eastern Massachusetts, and southern Maine. He served as a justice of the peace (including stints as a trial judge), handled routine matters of colonial administration, imposed penalties for failure to go to church, and performed marriages as late as 1795.
John Jones owned this surveyor’s chain and probably used it to prepare his many maps and surveys during the period when English colonists were taking ownership of Natick’s land. (NHS Collections)
Jones was likely not a patriot before the Revolutionary War. He was well connected among loyalists and was considered a protégé of royal governors and religious leaders. Jones even held a commission as a royal magistrate. However, he eventually gave up his commission, becoming a steadfast advocate of the patriots after being forced out of his office by local supporters of the Revolution under the threat of losing his estate. Stephen Badger, the minister of South Natick’s church, wrote a letter to a patriot leader, James Bowdoin of Boston, defending Jones’ reputation and right to remain employed. Two of Jones’ sons served in the Continental Army, and one gave his life to the cause.
Jones cut an imposing figure in Natick during his lifetime. He was also the real-life inspiration for the “Squire Jones” character in Oldtown Folks, the 1869 classic by Harriet Beecher Stowe. The squire “…was a well-formed, well-dressed man, who lived in a handsome style, and came to meeting in his own carriage…”
John Jones died at his farm on February 2, 1801, and was interred in the old burial ground behind the South Natick Meetinghouse.
Revised by Gail Coughlin, July 2022
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Selected sources and additional reading:
Natick Historical Society collections.
Badger, Stephen. Letter to James Bowdoin, November 3, 1776. reprinted in “Fragment of Local History: Spirit of the Times in Revolutionary Days,” The Natick Bulletin. Natick, MA: 1925, 4.
“Book of Minutes of Col. John Jones of Dedham.” Accessed June 14, 2019.