When teaching genealogy classes, I am always quick to point out to my students that when you look at your tree, you should marvel at what it took to get you here today. My example is John Wickham, my 7th great grandfather, who served in the French & Indian War and then turned around and fought in the Revolutionary War. John lived to nearly 101 years old and married at 98 to give his companion his pension before he died in 1835 – yes, 1835! But thinking about John – all it would have taken was one musket ball, cannon shot, or a bayonet stab to have taken out my Wickham > Archer > Stewart line and erased me! Whether it’s sheer luck, Divine Providence, or whatever you choose to believe, I have a deep appreciation of all my ancestors and the hardships they endured so that I could be here today. And look how many grandparents you had along the way! We’re all walking miracles, I tell you.
Today, I want to write about George Bulard Jones, my 3rd great-grandfather. George was born on September 5, 1863, in Hocking County, Ohio, to Henry Jones and Lucy Ann Jenkins. Henry (who also went sometimes by Wesley) was a blacksmith born in North Carolina or Virginia depending on which child’s records you’re looking at; there is also a debate over whether he immigrated here from Wales but I think people confuse him with his father Henry Sr, who looks to be the one who immigrated from Wales but since I’ve mentioned Wales…. at the bottom of this post is a neat breakdown of our Jones Welsh DNA and how one snippet of DNA from George’s grandfather Henry Sr that is residing in our chromosome 13 all these generations later. Pretty neat stuff! Anyway, I digressed there but it was interesting to know where our little sliver of Welsh DNA comes from though I still haven’t found it on my dad’s side which is another journey for another day, so back to George Bulard Jones.
George’s father, Henry/Wesley, had moved up to Ohio by the mid-1850s, as his siblings were born in Hocking County, too. Henry/Wesley worked as a blacksmith and as a teenager, George worked as a farmhand during the 1880s when they were residing in Laurelville. On September 13, 1883, George married Ethel Linda Murphy, daughter of William Henry Harrison Murphy and Mary Jane Shepherd from Ross County. A near “honeymoon” baby girl was born a short time later named Bertha (1884), and soon followed by our grandfather, Lewis Edward Jones, on March 12, 1886. Several more children would be born to George and Ethel Linda: Clifford (1888), William H.H. (1891), Daniel (1894), Mary Elizabeth (1897), John Paul (1898), and Mabel (1905). By 1900 George and Ethel Linda (aka Effie) were living in Deer Creek township in Pickaway County and he was working as a blacksmith like his father before him. In 1910, they had moved over to Madison township in Pickaway where he found work as a farm laborer again.
But in 1918, everything changed for the Jones family when they picked up and moved to Columbus, leaving the farmlands of Pickaway County behind. They moved around a lot so I thought a chart would be easier. These address entries are from the Federal censuses and the Columbus city directories, which were like the phone books of their eras. Used in conjunction with the censuses, it gives us a picture of where the Jones family moved to and what occupation George was doing. By looking at Google Earth and Zillow, none of these houses seem to exist any longer.
For our story today though, we’re going to be focusing on George’s time in 1932, and if you missed my “Grandma Rose Week 15 blog entry” from last week, you might want to read that because her entry for April 14th gave me quite a surprise where she wrote a little note that her grandfather George had been injured in a gas explosion at the unfinished State Office Building in Columbus, now the Thomas J Moyer Ohio Judicial Center on 65 S. Front Street. He was thrown through plate glass and was injured while 49 others were hurt and 11 killed. It piqued my curiosity so down the rabbit hole I went since I’d never, ever heard this tale – indeed, it proved completely true.
Rather than explain the whole shebang about how the Scioto waterfront was a mess and they wanted to build it up to be something monumental, I’m going to link a fantastic article written just last year about this very explosion. What weird timing to find Grandma Rose’s entry and then someone writes an article about the same thing, right? But to make a long story short, construction began in 1930 on the building and whether George was working in it since 1930, I have no clue but on April 14th, 1932, he surely was. At 2:45 P.M. on that Thursday afternoon, a huge, violent explosion shuttered through the lower levels of the building. As the writer of that article I linked says, “Floors buckled, walls collapsed, and chunks of marbled facade and glass were blown into the street and river… throwing elevator doors into hallways and piling plaster and broken marble a foot deep all the way up to the 10th floor.” Photos from the scene were devastating to look at with everything twisted and mangled, hardly recognizable from what they were originally. It made the newspapers everywhere, even here in New York City. Of course, theories ran rampant immediately about what happened, and “secret agents” and experts of all sorts got involved too. Was it sabotage or not? People smelled things, people saw a suspicious man running away, dynamite had gone missing days prior… all sorts of rumor-mongering. In the end, it was a gas explosion and the Columbus Gas & Fuel Company was sued by Ohio and & several victims’ families. The building was repaired and in 1933, state agencies began moving into the building.
Our grandfather George was thrown through plate glass according to Grandma Rose’s entry in her journal and George appeared on the injured list in the newspaper the following day, being taken to Grant Hospital for lacerations on his scalp. His address is listed as the Sullivant Avenue from the city directory I showed above so I know this is the right George. (Since George Jones is sort of a generic name, you want to be careful to make sure you’ve got the right person, ya know?) There were reports that some men were tossed from the building out onto the street, and from the sound of it, I believe that might have been George’s fate too. Grandma wrote that George was never the same after the accident and while it’s noted in the injured list that his lacerations were not serious, his head trauma might have been unseen and developed days later. In any event, following the accident, they ended up moving back to Pickaway County, to Williamsport, where George died just two years later in 1935.
But what’s most interesting to me is George’s death certificate and I’ll explain why. See it below for reference. ↓ When someone dies, they do give the cause of death but then also the secondary (or contributing) cause of death if something else is factored in as well. George was 71 when he died so seeing arteriosclerosis wasn’t a surprise nor was cardiovascular and renal disease as contributing factors. However… do you see the 131 number there I’ve circled in red? That is an ICD code (International Classification of Diseases Code) that the health department uses to categorize and track human deaths. These codes get revised and updated through the years but it’s a way to standardize public health and death – it gets a little more specific with how the person died. So instead of just generically saying “embolism” it might give a code to state which kind of embolism they died from – cerebral, pulmonary, or even thrombus, gas, etc. because it matters which it was for categorizing it. So with George’s death certificate, we see the code 131 there. When I look at the ICD for that year, it says 131 means “chronic nephritis” which corresponds with his renal disease. BUT do you see the 7899 there to the left circled in green? I don’t normally see more than one ICD code on death certificates so that was unusual and since the ICD code list only goes up to 200 for 1932, the number 7899 doesn’t make sense but splitting it up into 78 and 99 does. BINGO! The ICD code for 99 says “other diseases of the arteries” which matches his arteriosclerosis and cardiovascular disease. HOWEVER, the 78 is what made me jump out of my chair – the ICD code for 78 is guess what…. “cerebral abscess” meaning George suffered from a brain infection that is caused by bacteria or fungi making it to your brain from a head injury or surgery where germs got in. It can cause all sorts of headaches, nausea, fever, seizures, pressure on the brain, confusion, and a host of other issues. So I don’t believe George’s lacerated scalp was “not serious” at all – I think it was very serious indeed.
George was buried in Springbank Cemetery in Yellowbud Cemetery in Ross County. Ethel Linda lived until 1954 with her daughter Mabel. She is buried alongside George. You can virtually visit their graves here if you’ve never seen them and would like to. Several of their children are there along with Ethel Linda’s father, William, our other grandfather, which is why I think they chose to be buried there with him in that particular cemetery despite never residing in Ross County which I’m aware of. In any event, Ethel Linda’s obituary is posted on her grave page and you can read more about her there. I have not found one for George yet but am keeping an eye out. You never know what will appear and when.
Now let’s take a jaunt quickly to look at our DNA because it’s just so fascinating. If you look at our DNA, you’ll see everyone in our family who tested has Welsh DNA. Lisa (my mother) has 11 %, my sister Jamie has 11% and her daughter Madison has 5%, I have 8%, my son Noah has only 2%, and our 1st cousin Brady has 8%. My father (not shown) also has 8% Welsh and when I look at us all on DNA Painter, I get the majority of my Welsh DNA from his side but I do get a healthy chunk of Jones Welsh on chromosome 13. You can see this same Jones DNA on chromosome 13 in Lisa, Jamie, Madison, and Brady. Even my son Noah’s piddly 2% Welsh comes from this Jones line, as well. Madison, Jamie’s daughter, gets the majority of her Welsh from this Jones line with an additional sliver from her father’s side who we’ve not tested. Brady (who I thought would have nothing of the Jones Welsh) gets most of his from his paternal grandmother who was born in England so his DNA reflects his Welsh coming from her lineage, with just the teeniest bit from our Jones Welsh line on that same chromosome 13. It’s so interesting once you start picking it all apart by chromosomes and on which ones we match, or don’t. Go, go chromosome 13!
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed learning more about George and his most harrowing day and dipping into our Welsh DNA pool, too. If you happen to be a Jones relative, we all have DNA kits on GEDMatch. Please use the contact form and we’ll be happy to provide you with the numbers to see if we match.
