Springfield-Greene
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JOSHUA L. JONES. Farmers come nearer being their own business masters than any other class of workers. It takes considerable capital these days to go into farming properly, but a farmer nowadays does not need so much land as he has been taught to believe he should have. Where one hundred and sixty acres has been considered a necessity for a good farm, forty acres will soon he regarded as plenty; and for some kinds of crops ten acres is all a man can properly care for. Intensive cultivation with modern methods makes a successful farm out of few acres of land. Ownership and proper development of even a few acres will amply provide for the unproductive period in the lives of farmers.
One of the capable farmers of Republic township, Greene county, is Joshua L. Jones, who was born in this township and county, on the old Jones homestead, March 23, 1872. He is a son of Isaac N. and Martna (McClure) Jones, both natives of Monroe county, Tennessee, where they spent their earlier years. Isaac N. Jones was twenty-three years of age when he left his native state and immigrated to Greene county, Missouri. He received a fairly good education for a country boy in those days, and he taught school after coming to the Ozarks, continuing as a teacher until the commencement of the Civil war, during which period of strife between his fellow citizens, he acted as deputy sheriff under Elisha White. He was also county surveyor at one time. He devoted the latter part of his life to general farming in Republic township, where his death occurred in 1883. His widow survived until 1902, outliving him nineteen years. They were the parents of ten children, an equal number of sons and daughters, four of whom are living at this writing, one son and five daughters being deceased.
Joshua L. Jones grew to manhood on the home farm and there he worked hard when a boy. He received his education in the district schools of his neighborhood, and he also studied at Marionville Collegiate Institute, Marionville, Missouri. His brother, Ben G. W. Jones, who is in partnership with him farming, and who is three years younger, was educated in the local public schools and later was graduated from the Marionville Collegiate Institute.
Joshua L. Jones began life for himself as a farmer when a young man and this has continued to claim his constant attention. He and his brother, Ben G. W. Jones, own a good farm of forty acres in Republic, township and here they are obtaining very gratifying results as general farmers and stock raisers, being very close students of modern methods of agriculture and not afraid to experiment and adopt advanced ideas in husbandry. Both he and his brother have remained unmarried.
Politically our subject is a Democrat and active in local party affairs.
[1703-1704]
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