Lewis Jones

Lewis Jones was born in 1851 on Fred Tate's large plantation on the Colorado River in Fayette County, Texas. His father had been enslaved by a man named E. Jones and was sold to Tate, who, Lewis said, used him as a "breeding" man to increase the number of people he held. By his mother's count, his father had nearly fifty children by several women on the plantation, so Lewis said that almost anyone he met there was likely a brother or sister.

Rations were cooked in a central cookhouse and everyone ate at long tables. Old Tom, the plantation preacher, also played fiddle and banjo and judged jig contests where dancers balanced glasses of water on their heads. Lewis was the coachman, dressed up high on the seat behind a team of fast white horses. When someone blew the new steam gin's whistle and the horses bolted with Tate inside the coach, Lewis held the lines steady, talking to them, until they stopped, and Tate told him he'd driven like a veteran.

After emancipation he took his father's surname, Jones, and worked 23 years in a cotton gin at La Grange. In 1896 he moved to Fort Worth and worked for Armour & Co. until 1931. When interviewed at 86 he lived at 3304 Loving Avenue in Fort Worth.