Background

John Percival was born on January 27, 1829 in Herefordshire, England, United Kingdom, of Welsh ancestry. He was the son of Thomas and Mary (Pugh) Jones who emigrated to the United States while he was still an infant and settled in Cleveland, Ohio, where the boy spent his youth.

Education

Jones received his formal education in the public schools of Ohio.

Career

From the Western Reserve with its invigorating pioneer atmosphere Jones turned to the gold mines of California in the first year of the gold rush. With several other young men he obtained a small vessel, in which they crossed the Great Lakes, sailed down the St. Lawrence, and around the Horn to San Francisco.

In Trinity County, California, he engaged in farming as well as the new work of mining. Here also he served as sheriff when that was an arduous post, represented his county in the state legislature, and, later, ran unsuccessfully for the lieutenant-governorship.

In 1867 he followed the tide of emigration to the Washoe country in western Nevada, became superintendent of the famous Crown Point mine, and soon was part owner. When the stock of the company rose from two dollars to eighteen hundred dollars his fortune was assured so that he was in a position to use his qualities of leadership in the political life of the new state of Nevada.

He was elected by the state legislature as a Republican to succeed James W. Nye in the United States Senate, where he continued to sit from 1873. He was an ardent advocate of free-silver theories from 1875 to the close of his life, but only once, in 1897, was he elected as a silver candidate. In 1900 he returned to the Republican party.

When he was over eighty years of age he retired from active life to spend his declining years at the great house he had built in Santa Monica, where he had been an early land speculator and promoter.

Jones died in 1912 in Los Angeles, California.

Achievements

• John Percival Jones was wwell-known as the politician, who achieved important results for the Western states in in the Senate. But his most important service was in the sphere of mining legislation and on the problem of bimetallism. As the chairman of the monetary commission, he submitted an exhaustive report on the causes and effects of the change that had taken place in the relative value of gold and silver and advised the restoration of the double standard in this country ("Report and Accompanying Documents of the United States Monetary Commission"). This report continues to be valuable for its compilation of data on the history of the precious metals and for its reflection of the economic thought of the period.

Works

More photos

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  • Coinage of Silver Dollars

    (Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We h...)

  • Resumption and the Double Standard Or, the Impossibility of Resuming Specie Payments in the United States Without Restoring the Double Standard of Gol

    (Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We h...)

  • Banking and Currency. Speech of Hon. John P. Jones, of Nevada, in the United States Senate, April 1, 1874

    (Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We h...)

Connections

In January 1861 Jones married Mrs. Cornelia (Conger) Greathouse, the daughter of Judge Thomas Conger of Sacramento, and some years later he married the daughter of Eugene A. Sullivan of San Francisco.

Father:

Thomas Jones

Mother:

Mary (Pugh) Jones

Spouse:

Mrs. Cornelia (Conger) Greathouse