Butte County
Biographies
HARRY CAMPBELL JONES
HARRY CAMPBELL JONES.—A blacksmith
who has made a special study of the science and art of horse-shoeing, and whose
skill has easily enabled him to build up a good business, is Harry Campbell
Jones, the proprietor of the City Shoeing Shop, one of the valuable properties
in the town of Chico. Born in Wichita, Kans., on May 26, 1870, he is
the son of Alexander Campbell Jones, a native of Indianapolis, who was also a
horse-shoer and who made his own shoes and nails in
the days before machinery came to the help of the smith. He served in the Civil
War as a member of an Indiana regiment, and finally settled at Wichita.
Starting west, he went to the Indian Territory, then from Caldwell, Kans., to Geuda Springs; and there he died, forty-one and a half
years of age. His wife, who had been Anna L. Stewart before her marriage,
was born in Illinois and resided in Arkansas City, Kans., becoming the mother
of five children, among whom Harry C. was the eldest.
Brought up at Wichita and Caldwell,
Harry C. Jones attended the public school, and when twelve years of
age went to work in a shop where he learned the blacksmith trade. He blew the
bellows for his father, and helped make the nails and horseshoes. When his
father died, Harry C. was fifteen, and he set out to travel and worked at
shoeing in different parts of Kansas, Colorado, Indian Territory and Texas,
learning the business as it was then conducted. He shod bull and freighting
teams for the plains, and in 1894 had a shop at Colorado Springs, and later a
forge at Pueblo. He also worked at Denver and at Fort Collins, running a shop
at the latter place for ten years.
In 1910, Mr. Jones located in Chico and
started a shop at the corner of Main and Seventh Streets, which he ran until
1913. Then he bought the corner barn at Seventh and Wall Streets, fitted it up
as a shoeing-shop, installed three fires enclosed in brick, and opened a room
large enough to contain twenty horses, devoting the balance of the space to a
blacksmith shop.
At Cheyenne, Wyo., Mr. Jones was married
to Mrs. Martha C. Stewart, a native of Tennessee. By a former marriage he had
had two children, Henry and Thomas Jones; by this marriage, he had one son,
Harry Lincoln. The family attend the Methodist
Episcopal Church.
Transcribed by Marie Hassard
29 October 2009.
Source:
"History of Butte County, Cal.," by George C. Mansfield, Page 1284, Historic Record Co, Los
Angeles, CA, 1918.
© 2009 Marie Hassard.
Golden Nugget Library's
Butte County Biographies