William Jefferson Jones

William Jefferson Jones reached Galveston on November 9, 1837, and ran Mirabeau Lamar's presidential campaign without the title. Lamar then commissioned him to raise a battalion for frontier defense, and in 1839 he was ordered to join the Cherokee War, the campaign that expelled the Cherokee from East Texas. In February 1839 he urged Lamar to open trade with Santa Fe, which probably fed the Texan Santa Fe expedition of 1841. Jones also developed cottonseed oil for cooking and household use and promoted the Galveston, Houston and Henderson and the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe railroads.

What the plaque says

William Jefferson Jones (September 27, 1810 - May 5, 1897) Virginia native William Jefferson Jones received his license to practice law at age 19. He was an associate of Mirabeau B. Lamar, future president of the Republic of Texas, in a Georgia newspaper enterprise. Urged by Lamar to move to Texas, Jones traveled to Galveston in 1837 and in 1839 joined Lamar's military campaign to remove the Cherokee Indians from East Texas. Chosen as associate justice to the Texas Republic's first Supreme Court about 1840, Jones would later render the court's second decision. He married Elizabeth Giberson in 1841 and moved to Columbus in Colorado County to serve as district judge. He retired about 1852 and came to Virginia Point where he became the first person to successfully harvest valuable sea-island cotton in Texas and make use of its cottonseed oil. With William R. Smith in 1853, and again with his son, Walter C., in 1885, Jones produced plans for a city at Virginia Point. Although his proposals failed he is nevertheless credited with being among the first to envision the potential for a deep water port city on Galveston's mainland. Jones, whose generous land terms led to the development of La Marque's post-Civil War African American Highland Station community, is buried in Galveston's Lakeview Cemetery. (1993)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Texas Seaport Museum and the Elissa — 8.6 mi
  An iron barque launched in Aberdeen in 1877 that called at Galveston twice, ended up smuggling in the Adriatic, and was bought back from a Greek scrapyard to sail again from Pier 22.
• The Strand — 8.7 mi
  Five blocks of iron-front brick buildings near the harbor that were once called the Wall Street of the Southwest, emptied after 1900 and brought back by preservationists from the 1960s.
• Moody Mansion — 9.0 mi
  A four-story, 28,000-square-foot house on Broadway, finished in 1895, that W. L. Moody Jr. bought just after the 1900 storm and his family kept until Hurricane Alicia in 1983.
• 1859 Ashton Villa — 9.1 mi
  A brick Italianate house on Broadway, built with enslaved labor in 1859, whose lawn has held Galveston's Juneteenth commemoration of General Orders, No. 3 every year since 1979.

More markers nearby

• Shoal Point and Half Moon Shoal Lighthouse — steps away
• U. S. Army Camp at Texas City — steps away
• Wedell's Corner — steps away
• First Aero Squadron — 0.4 mi