Reuben Jones
Reconstruction-era legislator and Huntsville landowner from Madison County, Alabama — a blacksmith who bought plantation land in January 1871 and served in the state house in 1872–73. Born about 1833 in Madison County.
Life in brief
Reuben Jones was born about 1833 in Madison County, Alabama, and worked as a blacksmith. Documented In January 1871 he bought land parceled out of the Drake holdings — plantation land sold, not granted, to a freedman (Madison County Deed Books TT and UU). Documented He served as Madison County’s representative in the Alabama legislature in 1872–73, and became a major Huntsville landowner and subdivider of the Chelsea enclave. Documented His Freedman’s Bank account, opened December 24, 1872, names his father as Simon and his mother as Eliza Jones. Documented He died October 5, 1898. Documented
Records
Born, Madison County, Alabama Documented
Ages reported in federal censuses and his Freedman’s Bank signature register place his birth around 1833. No birth record names him.
Tuscaloosa household Documented
The 1860 federal census for Tuscaloosa lists Reuben with Jane (19) and daughter Emily (2); he is listed as a blacksmith (Hoksbergen & DeNeefe, citing the 1860 census).
Voter registration, Madison County Under investigation
“Jones Ruben” — the clerk’s spelling — registered the same day and precinct as Columbus Jones and Turner Jones, Madison County Precinct 1, Oath Book 1, p. 94. Consistent with the bank record’s brother Reuben; identity is suggestive, not proven.
School lease Documented
Reuben leased land to William Hooper Councill’s freedmen’s school in 1869–70 — the lease that ties the Jones family’s land to the founding of the school that became Alabama A&M.
Land purchase from the Drakes Documented
Reuben bought land in January 1871 (Madison County Deed Books TT, p. 488 and UU, p. 350 — the latter two acres south of the former). The grantors were the Drakes, who owned the plantation from about 1868 to 1871: plantation land parceled to a freedman by sale. On November 2, 1872, Reuben and his wife Mollie transferred land to Lucy Thompson (Deed Book TT, p. 489) — an intra-family transfer.
Wife Jane dies Documented
Reuben’s wife Jane died in June 1870 (1870 federal census, Madison County, p. 13).
State legislator Documented
Madison County representative in the Alabama legislature.
Freedman’s Bank account opened Documented
Registers of Signatures of Depositors, Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company, Huntsville branch (NARA M816, Roll 1), account 1406. Reuben names his father as Simon and his mother as Eliza Jones. (The father-name was long transcribed ‘Turner’; the deciding letterform read of the manuscript gives Simon.) He married Mollie Richardson in 1872; she died in 1888.
Third marriage Documented
Married Malvina “Vinie” Harrison.
Death Documented
Died October 5, 1898.
Kinship
Simon
Named in Reuben’s own bank register (No. 1406); read as Simon on the deciding letterform test of the manuscript word, superseding the earlier ‘Turner’ transcription. Kept separate from Turner Moore, the father named in Columbus’s register — no merge. Documented
Eliza Jones
Named in Reuben’s bank register. Kept separate from Elizabeth, the woman manumitted in 1820. Documented
Columbus Jones, Turner Jones
Columbus’s register (No. 29) names Turner Moore as father; Reuben’s own register names Simon. The brothers’ records do not agree, and this site does not force them to. Documented
Jane; Mollie Richardson; Malvina “Vinie” Harrison
Jane died June 1870. Mollie Richardson, married 1872, died 1888. Malvina Harrison, married 1889. Documented
Emily
Aged two in the 1860 Tuscaloosa census, with Reuben and Jane. Documented
Places
What the record doesn’t say
The silence ledger for Reuben
- No record names Reuben before 1860. His enslaver — if he was enslaved, and by whom — is undocumented.
- The father named in Reuben’s register was transcribed ‘Turner’ for years, by this project and by earlier extractions. A letterform test on the manuscript (October 16, 2026) reads the word as Simon; the Turner reading is preserved here as the superseded transcription, not deleted.
- Columbus’s register (No. 29) names Turner Moore as Columbus’s father. That is Columbus’s record; it does not name Reuben’s father.
- Reuben’s account (No. 1406) was long known through transcriptions that reach only March 1870 in the free source; the father-name was settled by a direct letterform read of the manuscript word. The remainder of the entry still rests on the transcription sources cited below.
- The deed texts for the January 1871 purchases (Books TT and UU) are recorded but the legal descriptions remain unpinned; boundary work is provisional.
Sources
- Registers of Signatures of Depositors in Branches of the Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company, 1865–1874, Huntsville, Alabama (National Archives Microfilm Publication M816, Roll 1) — Reuben Jones entry, account 1406, December 24, 1872.
- Madison County, Alabama, Deed Books TT, p. 488; UU, p. 350 (January–February 1871, Drakes to Reuben Jones); TT, p. 489 (November 2, 1872, Reuben & Mollie Jones to Lucy Thompson).
- 1870 U.S. Federal Census, Madison County, Alabama (NARA M593), p. 13.
- 1860 U.S. Federal Census, Tuscaloosa, Alabama (NARA M653), as cited in Hoksbergen and DeNeefe.
- Alabama Department of Archives and History, 1867 Voter Registration Books, Madison County vol. 1 (“Jones Ruben,” June 24, 1867, Oath Book 1, p. 94).
- 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).