The following information was assembled from numerous sources and cannot be used directly as proof of Qualifying Service or Lineage.
It is considered a research aid and is intended to assist in locating sources that can be used as proof.
Upright white marble gravestone, contemporary to burial
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Author: Gary Overby
Thomas Jones was born on June 6, 1751, in Enfield, Connecticut, to Captain Israel Jones, Senior, and Jemima (Nee Clark) Jones. By 1771, Captain Jones had purchased land in the wilderness settlement of Barkhamsted, Connecticut, and moved his family, along with his son Thomas, to that locale. In 1774 the General Assembly of Connecticut organized a militia for the Barkhamsted area, and Thomas’s father, a veteran of the French & Indian War, was elected lieutenant. Israel Jones, Sr., served during the Revolutionary War and completed his service as captain of the 13th Company, 18th Regiment of Connecticut Militia.
Thomas married Susannah Adams on November 23, 1773, and to their union was born five sons and four daughters. Except for their youngest child, all of Thomas and Susannah’s children were born in the Barkhamsted area as evidenced by baptismal records at East Hartland Church.
Following the Lexington Alarm, Thomas Jones answered the call-to-arms together with his father Israel, Sr., and his brothers Samuel, Israel, Jr., and William Clark Jones. Thomas served as a private in Captain Hayes’s Company of the 18th Regiment of Militia. It was with this unit that he served in the defense of New York in 1776.
Following this engagement, Thomas enlisted in Captain Judson’s Company of Major Skinner’s Light Horse (Connecticut). He served approximately 18 months “in the saddle” with the Light Horse and concluded his service as a sergeant.
Following the conclusion of the Revolutionary War, Sergeant Jones and his wife Susannah, raised their family in their Barkhamsted homestead until 1791, at which time, desirous to settle new lands for the benefit of his family, he and his brother William Clark Jones, emigrated together to Litchfield, New York, becoming pioneer settlers in that area.
Thomas and Susannah lived to see the fruits of their labor as their children grew, married, and became successful in their own right. Several members of the of the Jones family, beginning in 1799, began settling in the Western Reserve of Ohio and their children, in turn, continued the migration west in the 19th century to Illinois, Wisconsin, and beyond. Many of the descendants of Sergeant Thomas Jones would go on to serve the United States in military conflicts.
As for Thomas and Susannah, after many productive years in Litchfield, New York, Susannah died in 1815. Sergeant Jones spent his remaining years as a Revolutionary War pensioner with his family near Pulaski, New York. He died in 1832 and is buried next to Susannah in the Pulaski Village cemetery in Richland, New York.
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