At 310 feet, Parson Jones is the tallest tree in Armstrong Woods. Just who was Parson Jones? The Reverend William Ladd Jones, became part of Armstrong Woods history when he married Lizzie Armstrong, eldest daughter of Colonel James B. Armstrong. William was a Congregational minister, family friend, and next-door neighbor of the Armstrong family during the years he spent in Cloverdale, California, before his retirement to Pomona, California. In 1901, as a 73 year-old widower, he returned to Cloverdale and married Lizzie, then age 50. This was her first marriage. William Ladd Jones was born September 18, 1827, in Minot, Maine. He was the fourth child and first son of the nine children born to Rev. Elijah Jones and Bathsheba Jones. William grew up in Minot and graduated from Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, as a teacher. However, he became interested in the ministry and graduated from Bangor Theological Seminary in 1854, following which he joined the Congregational Home Missionary Society. In September of that year, William married his cousin, Anne Louisa Farrington, and they left for their honeymoon on a three-month trip by clipper ship around Cape Horn to California for his first assignment. William’s first ministry was in Camptonville, a small community in the gold country of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, where he served several surrounding communities for three years, and where his first two children were born. In 1859 Reverend Jones relocated his family to Eureka, California, where he founded the Congregational Church. For the next ten years, it was a life of living in the redwoods, dealing with local Indians, and also serving as County Superintendent of Schools. The last three of his five children were born here. After a brief period in San Juan (Bautista), during which time his youngest child died, and then in Benicia and Oakland, California, Rev. William Ladd Jones spent the next five years as president of Oahu College, now Punahou School, in Honolulu, Hawaii. William’s last assignment was with the Congregational Church in Cloverdale, California, where he and his wife settled in the parsonage, adjacent to the property where the Armstrong family built their home the following year. In 1897, after 43 years in the ministry, William and Anne Louisa Jones retired to Pomona, living with their son Harold Jones. Unfortunately, two years later both William and Anne became ill with “grippe,” and Anne subsequently died. William returned to Cloverdale in October 1900 for the funeral of his good friend Colonel James B. Armstrong. In March of the following year, William Ladd Jones married Lizzie Armstrong, who had been his first wife’s best friend . William and Lizzie made their home in the house James Armstrong had built in Guerneville, near Armstrong Woods, but they spent the winters in Cloverdale. During their marriage, William and Lizzie chose a tree in the park that they named the Parson Jones Tree, to honor William’s ministries. It is one of the tallest in the park at over 310 feet and is approximately 1,300 years old. In 1908 William fell at his Guerneville home. He was taken to Cloverdale, where he died November 18, 1908. He did not live to see his wife’s efforts to preserve Armstrong Woods as public property come to fulfillment. Some direct descendants of Parson Jones currently reside in both Northern and Southern California. Abstracted from: Dickenson, Doris M., and Finley, Carmen J., Parson Jones, the Life and Times of William Ladd Jones.
Posted on: Mon, 11 Aug 2014 05:17:50 +0000
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