Elizabeth
A woman enslaved in the Lewellen Jones network in Madison County, Alabama, freed — with three children named in the act — by special act of the Alabama legislature on December 11, 1820. The act calls her “a mulatto woman, named Elizabeth, aged forty years.”
Life in brief
Elizabeth was enslaved in Madison County in the Jones network; Lewellen Jones’s estate held forty-seven enslaved people at his death in 1820. Documented She was freed by “An Act to Authorize John N. S. Jones and Alexander P. Jones to Emancipate Certain Slaves therein Named,” approved December 11, 1820 — Alabama had entered the Union the year before, and under state law a legislative act was the lawful route to manumission. Documented The act freed Elizabeth, described as forty years old, with three children named in the act: Evelina, thirteen; Ann, six; and Shandy, three — the act itself states no relationships. Documented It required John N. S. Jones and Alexander P. Jones — Lewellen Jones’s sons — to post a bond with the Madison County Court that the freed people would never become chargeable to the state. Documented No trace of Elizabeth’s life after 1820 has been found. Unresolved She remains the researcher’s only maternal lead, and the maternity question stays open — no merge, no closure. Unresolved
Records
Born Documented
The 1820 act describes her as “aged forty years,” placing her birth around 1780. No birth record names her.
Lewellen Jones estate inventory Documented
Taken October 19, 1820, the inventory of Lewellen Jones’s estate lists forty-seven enslaved people as an unnamed group (Hoksbergen & DeNeefe, citing the estate file).
Manumission act approved Documented
Acts of the General Assembly of Alabama, 2nd session (Cahawba, November 1820), p. 62: the act authorizes John N. S. Jones and Alexander P. Jones to emancipate “a mulatto woman, named Elizabeth, aged forty years” with Evelina, Ann, and Shandy, once the brothers execute a bond with the Madison County Court that “the said slaves … shall never become chargable to the state.” The act names no estate, states no relationships, and gives no reasons.
Manumission bond Under investigation
The bond the act required has not been located. It would likely sit in Madison County court minutes or deed books, and it is the one record that could confirm the emancipation was perfected or add post-act detail.
No trace in Madison County free-colored records Documented
Nancy Rohr’s transcription of Madison County’s free people of color, 1830–1860, contains no Eliza, Elizabeth, Evelina, Ann, or Shandy Jones — only Kiziah, Nancy (twice), Sarah, and Sye (twice) appear as Jones entries. Absence is negative evidence only: she may have left the county, died, changed names, or evaded enumerators.
No trace in the Huntsville Black census Documented
The 1865 Huntsville Black census (Rohr, Appendix II) lists sixty-one people surnamed Jones; none is Eliza or Elizabeth.
Kinship
Evelina
Aged thirteen in the 1820 act. The act does not state the relationship; Hoksbergen and DeNeefe describe the children as presumably Elizabeth’s. Under investigation
Ann
Aged six in the 1820 act. A 2017 Alabama Senate joint resolution calls Ann and Evelina Shandy’s sisters. Under investigation
Shandy Wesley Jones
Aged three in the 1820 act. No document names his father; Hoksbergen and DeNeefe note descendants identify John N. S. Jones as the probable father, and float Lewellen Jones himself — speculation, not evidence. Unresolved
Eliza Jones
Family oral history and a commissioned genealogy associate Eliza — the mother named in Columbus and Reuben Jones’s bank records — with Elizabeth. Elizabeth would have been about forty-seven at Columbus’s birth (~1827), fifty-three at Reuben’s (~1833), and sixty-three when brother Turner was reportedly born (~1843). Hoksbergen and DeNeefe call the maternity theory “remote” on age grounds. Eliza died in fall 1861; the two women are kept separate pending direct evidence. Unresolved
Places
What the record doesn’t say
The silence ledger for Elizabeth
- No record of her life before the 1820 act: no birth record, no bill of sale, no estate listing her by name.
- No record of her life after December 11, 1820. She does not appear in Madison County’s free-colored censuses (1830–1860) or the 1865 Huntsville Black census.
- The manumission bond the act required has not been located — the one document that could confirm the emancipation took effect.
- No document names the father of her children. Published speculation about Lewellen Jones or John N. S. Jones is conjecture, not evidence.
- No document connects her to Eliza Jones, the mother named in Columbus and Reuben Jones’s bank records. The maternity theory rests on family oral history and one commissioned genealogy, and published scholarship calls it “remote.”
- The 1859 Tuscaloosa free-Black registration (mayor’s register and $100 bonds, cited via Hubbs) has not been located — if it survives, it could carry post-1820 traces.
Sources
- Acts of the General Assembly of the State of Alabama, 2nd session (Cahawba, November 1820), p. 62 — “An Act to Authorize John N. S. Jones and Alexander P. Jones to Emancipate Certain Slaves therein Named,” approved December 11, 1820.
- Ben Hoksbergen and Jane DeNeefe, “Keeping Up with the Joneses: Tracing the Lives and Legacies of Two Reconstruction-Era Legislators from Madison County,” Alabama Review 79, no. 3 (July 2026).
- Nancy Rohr, Free People of Color in Madison County, Alabama, Appendices I–III (Huntsville History Collection).
- Jacquelyn Proctor Reeves, “Lewellen Jones Estate,” Valley Leaves 44, no. 3 (2010): 92.
- G. Ward Hubbs, “On the Razor’s Edge: Shandy Jones Makes His Way through the Nineteenth Century,” Alabama Heritage (Fall 2020): 20–29.