Edward Wadsworth Jones

Edward Wadsworth Jones (1840–1934) was an officer in the American Civil War, a miner in Idaho and Utah and an entrepreneur in Los Angeles, California. He was a member of the Los Angeles Common Council, the governing body of that city in the 19th century.

Personal

Jones was born November 28, 1840, in New Hartford, Connecticut, and spent his youth in Tennessee, where he studied at the state university.

In 1863 he married Ellen Carter Spencer of Illinois in Washington, D.C. in the Arlington Heights district, leaving a son, Edward Conde Jones of Paris, France, and two daughters, Mrs. J. Forsyth of Los Angeles and Mrs. Louise J. Dobbins of Monterey, California. Cremation services were at Rosedale Cemetery.

Vocation Jones operated a mining company in Idaho and Utah between 1871 and 1881. Its rich silver mines in the Salmon River region were the most profitable, with around $600,000 to $800,000 of ore extracted. He spent most winters in Salt Lake, but in 1876 and 1877 he went to El Salvador to examine the mines there.

Jones was also a horticulturist, and in 1919, at the age of seventy-six, he sought a passport to visit Italy, writing in his application:

The applicant has been a grower of oranges, lemons, walnuts, grapes and other fruits for about thirty years . . .; knows something about the labor problems of this State; is aware that we are losing hundreds of our best laborers, who are returning to their Italian homes; has spent many months in Italy up to the beginning of the war [World War I]; speaks and reads the Italian language fairly well; enjoys improved health there and has friends in that country. He hopes and expects to sow seeds for our and their labor improvement, without which improvement California will suffer.

Politics

Jones represented the 3rd Ward on the Los Angeles Common Council beginning December 7, 1885, and was reelected for another one-year term in 1886.

Memberships

He served for three years as the first president of the newly organized Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce beginning in 1888, and then on the board of directors from 1893–95. He also served on the board of the Los Angeles Public Library. Jones was the president of the Historical Society of Southern California.