Jerry Franklin and Danny Ricketts headed out the Chalk Level northeast of Chatham, Virginia on March 21, 2014.  It was the first full day of Spring and a beautiful day.  Jerry had Jones ancestors and my mother was a Jones.  I remembered finding the old cemetery of Richard Jones (1783-1870) back 25 or 30 years ago.  East of state road 685, then down a narrow dirt road we came to the cemetery with a four-foot high wall of large long stones. 

This cemetery is among the most clearly marked and easiest to read 19th century graveyard that I have found.  The land where the cemetery is located is said to have belonged to Richard Jones' grandfather Thomas Jones who came to Pittsylvania (then this was Halifax County) about 1765 from Gloucester County, where in 1763 he married Marry Brooks.  Thomas Jones lived on his "Mountain Top" plantation to the southeast of the cemetery.  His two sons were Thomas Brooks Jones and Emmanuel Jones.  Richard Jones, the oldest marked grave in this cemetery, was a son of Thomas B. Jones.

One grave here is for Sarah Smith Jones, who married Coleman D. Bennett.  She is a daughter of Richard Jones.

Richard Jones attended Hampton-Syndey College and taught school for two years at Lynchburg College and then at the Banister Academy near his home on the Sheva to Clark's Bridge (across the Banister River).  He is said to have been a Latin scholar.

These stones reflect the fact that Richard Jones was among the most wealthy in Pittsylvania County at the beginning of the Civil War.   It is said that he invested $40,000 in Confederate bonds and securities.