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| Jones
Timeline
1846
- American and U.S. troops clash on Mexican border;
beginning of Mexican War
1848
- Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ends Mexican War. U.S.
gains vast territory, Mexico concedes Texas and recognizes
Rio Grande as border.
1849
- Seriously injures left arm, resulting in disability
and chronic pain
1850
- Zachary Taylor, hero of Mexican War, becomes president
1853
- Gadsden Purchase of strip of New Mexico opens route
for southern transcontinental railroad
1857
- Fails to receive any votes for vacant U.S. Senate
seat
January
9, 1858 - Commits suicide in Houston hotel room
1859
- Jones's book The Republic of Texas is published
posthumously
December
31, 1907 - Mary Jones dies at age 89 after almost
fifty years as a widow; ran a prosperous plantation
at Lynchburg, worked as a pioneer doctor, and helped
found the Daughters of the Republic of Texas
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By 1847,
Jones wrote bitterly to his friend, journalist John
Henry Brown of Victoria, about the way his political
feuding with Thomas J. Rusk was being reported. In
this excerpt, he also makes an eerie prediction. |
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Anson Jones
Left Behind
Anson
Jones wrote this letter of advice to one of his sons.
It is dated 1858, indicating that it was written in
the last few tortured days of his life. Jones had
three sons, Sam (born 1841), Charles (born 1843),
and Cromwell (born 1849) as well as a daughter, Sallie
(born 1845).
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In the years that followed, Jones
built a thriving plantation at Barrington and a prosperous
medical practice. His wife Mary was devoted to him, and
his children were healthy and intelligent. His sister Mary
moved back to Texas and opened a schoolhouse nearby where
the Jones children and others had their lessons.
Some men might have been happy, but
Anson Jones was not. Over the years he grew bitter and obsessed.
He spent years copying old diaries and letters, accumulating
six hundred pages of manuscript that he said would prove
the wisdom of his annexation policies. He traveled to New
England, scene of his impoverished boyhood, where he spent
months researching his genealogy. He took grim satisfaction
when he finally proved that he was a descendant of the famous
Cromwell family. Most destructively, he conceived an insane
hatred of Sam Houston, becoming convinced that Houston was
a villain who would destroy Texas.
In 1849, Jones was thrown from a
horse. His left arm was crushed and became withered and
discolored. For a time, the severe injury seemed to jolt
him into the present. He traveled to the east for medical
treatment and became interested in business and new technology,
especially railroads. He rejoined the Odd Fellows and became
involved in his church. But he soon found that the business
world was as corrupt as the politics he had renounced. His
arm gave him constant pain that even morphine could not
blunt, and he retired once more to a brooding existence
at Barrington.
In 1857, both of Texas's seats in
the United States Senate were vacant. Sam Houston was running
for governor rather than seeking another term in the Senate,
and Thomas J. Rusk had committed suicide. Jones believed
that he would be chosen by the state legislature to fill
one of the vacancies. He traveled to Austin to accept the
honor in person. He expected to be greeted by callers eager
to hear his views on the future course of Texas. Instead,
he sat alone at his inn with his papers and his newspaper
clippings. When the balloting took place, he received not
a single vote.
Jones was shattered. Thereafter,
his life rapidly spiraled out of control. Hastily, he decided
to sell his plantation and move the whole family to Galveston
to start over. He let Barrington go for only a fourth of
its value. Leaving the family still at the plantation, he
went to Houston and gave his six-hundred page manuscript
to his bankers. It would explain everything about the true
founding of the Republic of Texas.
Then Anson Jones checked into the
Old Capitol hotel, the wooden building that had once served
as the capitol of Texas, the place where he had shed his
identity as a failed country doctor and become a respected
statesman. He stayed for four days, brooding upon the past.
He ate dinner with a friend, telling him that, "My
public career began in this house, and I have been thinking
it might close here." That night, January 9, 1858,
Anson Jones returned to his room and shot himself. He was
fifty-nine years old.
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