Willie (Fay) Jones
The man who lost the well. In 1954 the City of Huntsville condemned the well site on his family’s Athens Pike land; in 1958 he sold the parcel. His siblings carry the land-reclamation fight today — Black ownership taken and destroyed, in a single life.
Life in brief
Willie (Fay) Jones was a Black landowner on Athens Pike in Huntsville, Alabama — the family’s 2.25-acre parcel sitting about three miles northwest of the city, with the family well on it. Documented In 1954, the City of Huntsville condemned a sixty-by-forty-foot site around that well, in Madison County Probate Cause No. 12257. The December 30, 1954 decree set the award at $900; on appeal it was raised to $1,250. Documented On October 15, 1958, Willie Jones and his wife Lola Mae Jones sold two tracts — including the 2.25-acre parcel — to W. L. Sanderson Realty, recorded in Deed Book 265, page 314. Documented
The parcel’s paper trail runs on: the City of Huntsville’s 1963 annual report lists “Land Acquisition Office — Chief—W. L. Sanderson” — a documented position, stated here as fact and nothing more. Documented In 1963–64 the land passed through Equity Cause No. 18604, in which the University of Alabama Board of Trustees appeared with a one-eighth interest. Documented And the story is not over: from 2023 to 2025, five surviving Jones siblings carried the land-reclamation fight into public view — a partnership with Where Is My Land, a September 18, 2023 press release, news investigations, and City Council follow-up. Documented
Whether Willie was the great-grandson of Reuben Jones — the Reconstruction legislator — is the project’s staged hypothesis, not a finding. Deed Book 265, page 314 is the test: the deed that would connect the two names. Until it is read, the kinship is not stated as fact on this page. Under investigation
Records
The condemnation — Probate Cause No. 12257 Documented
The City of Huntsville condemns the sixty-by-forty-foot well site on the Jones family’s 2.25-acre Athens Pike parcel. Decree December 30, 1954: $900. Raised to $1,250 on appeal.
The sale — Deed Book 265, page 314 Documented
Willie Jones and Lola Mae Jones sell two tracts, including the 2.25-acre parcel, to W. L. Sanderson Realty. This is the deed the great-grandson hypothesis turns on.
Equity Cause No. 18604 Documented
The land moves through equity litigation in which the University of Alabama Board of Trustees appears with a one-eighth interest. The City’s 1963 annual report lists W. L. Sanderson as chief of the Land Acquisition Office.
The reclamation fight Documented
Five surviving Jones siblings take the land-reclamation case public: the Where Is My Land partnership, the September 18, 2023 #ActivateHuntsville press release, news investigations, and City Council follow-up. Living memory, still in motion.
Kinship
Lola Mae Jones
Co-seller of the 1958 deed with Willie — her name is on the transfer. Documented
Lloyd Jones
Identified as Willie’s brother. Appears here as family context, not a separate page. Documented
Reva Jones Boyd
Identified as Willie’s sister. Appears here as family context, not a separate page. Documented
Charlie Eldridge
Identified as Willie’s cousin. His own related condemnation — Cause No. 6147 in 1956 — is a different case and is not merged with Willie’s. Documented
Lillie Mae Crawford
Identified as Willie’s niece. Appears here as family context, not a separate page. Documented
Reuben Jones, great-grandfather — and Columbus Jones, great-grandfather
The former hypothesis is now proven: the well-case litigant Willie Fay Jones (d. Nov. 1971) is the same man as Willie Faye Jones, grantor of the October 15, 1958 deed to W. L. Sanderson Realty (Madison County Deed Book 265, p. 314) — the Nov. 18, 1963 bill in Equity Cause No. 18604 names the litigant as the grantor. Per Hoksbergen & DeNeefe (Alabama Review 79(3) (2026): 224–226, fns 116–118), Willie's father Thomas Lee Jones was the grandson of Columbus and Tomietta Jones, and his mother Ruby Odell McCalley Jones was the granddaughter of Reuben and Jane Jones: Willie was the great-grandson of both. (This card previously fenced the lineage as an untested hypothesis; the former caution is preserved here for provenance.) Documented
Willie May Jones (1916)
L. M. Jones v. Willie May Jones (1916) concerns a different Willie — kept separate. Documented
Willie Lee (1920)
A Willie Lee appears in the 1920 Morgan County, Georgia census — a different person, kept separate. Documented
Places
What the record doesn’t say
The silence ledger for Willie (Fay) Jones
- Whether Willie was Reuben Jones’s great-grandson is untested. Deed Book 265, page 314 is the document that would settle it, and it has not yet been read firsthand.
- Why the family sold in 1958 — four years after the condemnation cut the well out of the parcel — is not in the records this project has read. The deed records the transfer; it does not record the reason.
- The full text of Probate Cause No. 12257 and Equity Cause No. 18604 has not yet been pulled. The case files may name every party, every award, and every acre.
- W. L. Sanderson’s positions are documented; his motives are not. This page alleges nothing beyond what the records state.
- Willie’s birth and death dates are not yet in the project’s records. He enters the written record as a landowner defending — and then selling — his family’s ground.
Sources
- Madison County Probate Cause No. 12257 (1954–56) — City of Huntsville condemnation of the 60×40-ft well site; decree December 30, 1954 ($900); raised to $1,250 on appeal.
- Madison County Deed Book 265, p. 314 — Willie Jones and Lola Mae Jones to W. L. Sanderson Realty, October 15, 1958, two tracts including the 2.25-acre parcel.
- Madison County Equity Cause No. 18604 (1963–64) — University of Alabama Board of Trustees, one-eighth interest.
- City of Huntsville annual report, 1963 — “Land Acquisition Office — Chief—W. L. Sanderson.”
- Where Is My Land partnership materials; #ActivateHuntsville press release, September 18, 2023; 2023–25 news investigations and City Council follow-up — five surviving Jones siblings’ land-reclamation activism.