Anthony & Mary Jones
Anthony Jones filed Southern Claims Commission Claim No. 3,137 in 1871 — and signed it in his own hand, not with an X-mark. Mary Jones (1812–1865) lies in the Jones (Mary) Cemetery. Whether they were husband and wife is unconfirmed.
Life in brief
Anthony Jones appears in Madison County in the 1860s and 1870s: among the tenants and purchasers settling the estate of Alexander P. Jones — the Madison County planter enumerated with ninety-six enslaved people in 1860 — in 1866–67, and in the Southern Claims Commission files in 1871. Documented His SCC filing, Claim No. 3,137, was barred and disallowed — but the filing itself survives, and on it Anthony Jones signed his own name rather than making an X-mark. Documented For a Black man in Reconstruction Alabama, a signature on a federal form is not a small thing; it is evidence of literacy the archive almost never records, and of a man who understood what a written claim was. Documented He is also recorded in the Madison County cemetery surveys of 1970 and 2014. Documented
Mary Jones (1812–1865) is buried in the Jones (Mary) Cemetery in Madison County. Documented She died the year the war ended. The name, the dates, and the ground place her in Anthony’s world — but no document names her as his wife, and this page does not either. Under investigation
Records
Mary Jones born Documented
Her cemetery stone gives her dates as 1812–1865. No birth record names her.
Mary Jones dies Documented
Buried in the Jones (Mary) Cemetery, Madison County. She died in the final year of the Civil War.
Anthony Jones in the Alexander P. Jones estate cluster Documented
Anthony Jones appears among the tenants and purchasers settling the estate of Alexander P. Jones — the Madison County planter enumerated with ninety-six enslaved people in 1860 — in 1866–67.
Southern Claims Commission, Claim No. 3,137 Documented
Anthony Jones files a claim with the Southern Claims Commission — the federal body that compensated Southern Unionists for property taken by the Union army. The claim was barred and disallowed. On the 1871 filing, he signs his own name rather than making an X-mark: direct evidence of literacy.
Cemetery surveys Documented
Anthony Jones is recorded in the Madison County cemetery surveys of 1970 and 2014.
Kinship
Mary Jones (1812–1865)
Buried in the Jones (Mary) Cemetery. The surname, the dates, and the ground make her a candidate wife for Anthony — but no document says so, and the relationship stays unconfirmed. Under investigation
Anthony of Lewellen Jones’s 1805 deed of gift
An Anthony appears among the enslaved people in Lewellen Jones’s 1805 deed of gift — a different generation, a different man. Kept separate. Documented
Anthony Walker
Son of Samuel Cartwright, a Freedman’s Bank depositor — a different family entirely. The shared given name proves nothing. Documented
Places
What the record doesn’t say
The silence ledger for Anthony & Mary Jones
- No record names Anthony Jones’s enslaver, his birth date, or his death date. He enters the written record as a free man making a federal claim.
- The full text of SCC Claim No. 3,137 has not yet been read firsthand — the file is the sharpest next source, and it may name family, property, and witnesses.
- No document confirms Mary Jones as Anthony’s wife. She shares his surname, his county, and his cemetery ground — that is the whole of the evidence, and it is not enough.
- No record connects Anthony Jones to the Avalon Jones network by kinship. He stands in the network’s geography and its records, and no further.
- Three different Anthonys appear in this project’s records — the 1805 deed-of-gift Anthony, Anthony Walker, and this man. The archive reuses names; this page does not reuse people.
Sources
- Southern Claims Commission, Claim No. 3,137 (Anthony Jones, 1871) — barred and disallowed; 1871 filing signed in the claimant’s own hand.
- Alexander P. Jones estate records, 1866–67 — tenant/purchaser cluster.
- Madison County cemetery surveys, 1970 and 2014 — Anthony Jones entries; Jones (Mary) Cemetery, Mary Jones (1812–1865).