Willie was born probably in 1741 in Northampton County, North Carolina, United States. His Christian name is pronounced Wylie. His great-grandfather, Robert or Robin Jones, emigrated to Virginia from Wales in the middle of the seventeenth century, and his father, the third Robert or Robin ap Jones, went to North Carolina as attorney and agent for Lord Granville. His mother was Sarah, the daughter of Robert Cobb of Virginia.
Jones was sent to England to be educated, and both spent some years at Eton. He traveled on the Continent for a time and returned to North Carolina in the early sixties.
Jones built in the town of Halifax a handsome house, "The Grove, " which became a center of lavish entertainment and, later, of political discussion and council. Willie Jones prospered as a planter and business man and acquired what was in that day a large fortune. He became increasingly well known in the province and, long before he held office, was a man of wide influence.
He was an aide to Governor Tryon in the Alamance campaign against the Regulators. From the beginning of the quarrel with the mother country he was an ardent supporter of colonial rights, and nothing else, probably, could have drawn him into politics. For that cause he labored untiringly and unceasingly.
In 1774 he was recommended by the Board of Trade for a place on the colonial council but naturally was not appointed, serving instead as chairman of the Halifax Committee of Safety. He threw his influence in favor of the call of the first Provincial Congress in 1774, and, from either the borough or the county of Halifax, was elected a member of each of the five provincial congresses, but he could not attend the fourth because the Continental Congress had appointed him superintendent of Indian affairs for the southern colonies. Yet he exerted a great influence in that Congress, which was attempting to draft a constitution. His group was in a majority but postponed action in the hope of a compromise that would reconcile the conservative element led by Samuel Johnston.
At the fifth Congress, with a liberal majority, Jones served on the committee to draft the constitution, which was a compromise satisfactory to all but the conservative extremists. He was influential in determining its form and character, and by many has been credited with its authorship. He was a member of the House of Commons from the borough of Halifax in 1777 and 1778, and from the county in 1779 and 1780. He was senator in 1782, 1784, and 1788. In 1781 and 1787 he was a member of the Council of State. In 1780 he was elected to the Continental Congress and served a year. He was elected a delegate to the federal convention but declined to accept, and, when the Constitution was submitted, he led the opposition to its ratification. When the debate was over the convention by a majority of one hundred refused to ratify, recommended twenty-six amendments and adjourned. Jones favored a delay of some years in ratification, but the tide set the other way. He was elected to the convention of 1789 but did not attend. His public life was over.
He was a member of the first board of trustees of the University of North Carolina, and was one of the commission which located the capital and provided for building a statehouse. He built a home in Raleigh and, dying there after a long illness, was buried there in a grave, by his own request unmarked.
Willie Jones was a highly influencial politician, who served in the North Carolina House of Commons and the North Carolina Senate. He led the faction that opposed North Carolina's ratification of the Constitution in 1788 because he feared that the national government would be too powerful. He also helped to determine the site for the new state capital in 1791, which was named Raleigh. Jones Street in Raleigh, where the General Assembly building is located, was named for him. , Jones County, North Carolina and Jonesborough, Tennessee were also named for him.
In religion he was a free-thinker and in his will (recorded in Halifax County, North Carolina) directed that "no priest or any other person is to insult my corpse by uttering any impious observations over it. "
For the dozen years Jones was politically the most powerful man in the state, the undisputed leader of the democratic element, which was in the ascendant; yet no man ever used power more moderately.
A close and devoted friend of Jefferson, he agreed enthusiastically to his suggestion that four states should decline to ratify until a bill of rights was obtained, but, when Jefferson changed and favored unanimous ratification, Jones, if aware of the change, did not follow him. His objections to the Constitution were fundamental; Jefferson's only incidental. He was a delegate to the convention of 1788, and behind him was a majority of one hundred against ratification.
As a leader he was cool-headed and temperate and, in those respects, a striking contrast to his political opponents, who hated him as the Federalists later hated Jefferson and for the same reasons, and who covered him with the same scandalous abuse. While an aristocrat in social life, he had a genuine passion for political democracy. From the first he saw in the struggle with Great Britain a democratic movement and was determined to embody its ideals into the resulting government. His opposition to the Constitution was not, as his opponents described it, due to wrong-headedness nor yet to mere particularism, but was inspired by his fear of checking the development of liberal government.
Jones was a man of superior ability and was a political organizer of genius. Personally he was a man of culture and great charm, warm-hearted and affectionate, a devoted husband and father.
At age 25 Willie married Mary Montfort, daughter of Colonel Joseph Montfort, who had been appointed by the Duke of Beaufort as the first and only "Grand Master of Masons of and for America". The couple had thirteen children, only five of whom lived to adulthood. Of those who did, two were sons and both died unmarried.
