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These are the notes made in
an effort to record what went on at the Jones Place on the Osage
Highlands, close to the famed Chapman Barnard Ranch, The "Boots" Adams
Ranch, The Cotting Ranch, The Drummond's and the Oliphants ranches.
Really the Jones Place
cannot by any stretch of imagination be mentioned along with these great
ranches. It was a circle where the last of the line of a ranching family
to come out of Georgia settled. Their grandfather, William Stephens Jones,
Indian agent in state before Oklahoma was a state. His son, Joseph Hubbard
Jones, ran the run, staked a claim and ranched along with farming there
out of Guthrie, Oklahoma. Joseph's coming to the Osages for sustenance
during drought was acceptable. His father had fought a battle before him
to assure the tribe survived. Joseph and his family were welcome and one
of his sons married an Osage girl. This gravitating by the family to the
Highlands of Osage county was to go to the allotment of this girl. Land,
no matter if it was only three hundred acres were worth going toward if
one knew about living as a cattle grower. Their leasing of the lands
around them increased the size of their spread.
In order to record the
remnants of what happened to this family we did much study, record
keeping, recording of what their house was like, the furniture, the work
done to the land. Here is where I am setting the notes thanks to the
generosity of Alastair McIntyre at Electric Scotland.
If from these notes at some
distant time one of the heirs can pick up on this, pull the community
together with a vision of creating a museum to bring to the public the
hard work of the men dedicated to their family's and, to their nation
through the raising of fine beef, it will be a fine project.
So, in my ignorance of what
is what I go back to Scotland to study, to see what this country did to
preserve their monuments. This is what helped me and I address this first.
Reuben Haines, III of Wyck wrote in the
1820s:
What is education--it is all that makes a man's mind more active, and the
ideas which enter it nobler and more beautiful is a great addition to his
happiness whenever he is alone and to the pleasure which others derive
from his company when he is in society. Therefore it is most useful, to
learn to love and understand what is beautiful, whether in the works of
God, or in those of man; whether in the flowers and fields, and rocks and
woods, and rivers, and sun and sky; or in fine buildings, or fine
pictures, or fine music; and in the noble thoughts and glorious images of
poetry. This is the education which will make a people good, and wise, and
happy. |
