John H. Jones and Carrie Otis Jones
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
John H. Jones (c. 1834 – 1902) and Carolyn or Carrie Otis Jones (died 1909) were a pioneer husband and wife in Los Angeles, California, whose real estate holdings became worth millions of dollars by the beginning of the 20th century. John H. Jones was a member of the Los Angeles Common Council, the governing body of the city.
Public service
John H. Jones was born about 1834 in Chester, Massachusetts. He had a sister, later Mrs. F. J. Hall.[1] In 1852 or 1854 he married Carolyn Otis.[2][3][4]
In that same year he took ship around Cape Horn and debarked at the port of San Pedro, California, and made his way to Los Angeles "with a $20 gold piece and nothing else in the way of worldly possessions but the clothes on his back." He was hired by Don Abel Stearns to take care of horses and to be a general caretaker: His first job was to put together a collection of furniture that had come from the East.[1][2]
John H. Jones died in his 258 East Adams Street home on February 12, 1903, at the age of sixty-nine, with a diagnosis of heart illness.[2] A funeral service was held in the residence, with the Rev. Warren F. Day of the First Congregational Church officiating, and the body placed in a receiving vault at Rosedale Cemetery "to await the construction of a private vault."[5]
John H. Jones was elected on December 3, 1877, to represent the 3rd Ward on the Los Angeles Common Council, serving one term until December 6, 1878.[6]
He was a leader in forming the first volunteer fire department in Los Angeles, known as the Park Hose Company.[2]
Carrie Otis Jones
In 1852 or 1854 Carolyn Otis married John H. Jones in Boston, Massachusetts, and she joined him in Los Angeles in 1856, voyaging from the East by way of the Isthmus of Panama. She was said to be the "fourth woman of Anglo-Saxon lineage to settle in" the Pueblo of Los Angeles.[2][3][4]
Carrie Jones was noted as a "philanthropist, church worker and California pioneer" who "managed her large holdings with rare judgment and acumen." She gave $20,000 to the Los Angeles YWCA for the construction of a building on Hill Street, she gave donations to build churches, and she "contributed generously for the establishment of the Barlow Sanitarium."[4]
She died of "organic heart trouble" on October 19, 1909, in the family home, survived by a sister, Augusta J. Hubbard of Los Angeles, and a brother, N. L. Otis of Albany, New York.[4] A funeral service was conducted in the home by the Reverend William Horace Day, followed by a cortege of thirty carriages that trailed a "bronze casket weighing nearly 1500 pounds, and banked with rare flowers" to the Evergreen Cemetery, Los Angeles.[7]
