J.A. Jones Farm Complex (18MO383)

The J.A. Jones Farm Complex site (18MO383; MIHP# M:16-3) was the location of a c. 1900 farmstead. It is located near Poolesville in northwest Montgomery County, and was investigated in advance of the proposed creation of a county landfill.

The J.A. Jones Farm Complex is situated on a tract of land known as “Allison’s Adventure,” first surveyed for William Caster and John Allison in 1726. John later transferred his portion of the parcel to his son Hendry Allison, who sold it in 1772 to William Wilcoxon. Ten years later, Wilcoxon sold it to Thomas Cooley. The property stayed in the Cooley family, albeit subdivided, until Henry W. Talbott began buying the various parcels between 1828 and 1836. Talbott did not live on the property, and in 1855 he sold Allison’s Adventure to John Augustus Jones. Sometime between 1863 and 1869, Jones began making improvements to the property, most likely after the Civil War ended. By 1870, he lived there with his wife and two sons, his sister, and seven African American farm laborers and servants. After his death in 1895, his son George D. Jones inherited the property, who in turn passed it to his son Lee in 1922. Lee Jones and his mother sold the farm in 1943. The farm then went through a series of owners before being purchased by Montgomery County in 1995. In the 1970s the farm was used as a summer youth camp known as “Camp Adventure.” A fire in 1978 destroyed the Jones house.

A Phase I survey of 18MO383 was conducted in 1991. It was defined as having two loci: the historic core of the Jones farm and its successors, and a cluster of late 19th/20th-century artifacts located about 800 feet to the west. Non-systematic surface collection and four shovel test pits were used to investigate the core site, while the western locus was just surface collected. The stone foundations of the Jones house and other 19th-century buildings were noted at the core locus. The artifacts recorded there dated to the 19th and 20th centuries. No features were noted at the western artifact cluster, which was thought to be refuse from the Jones house or a tenant residence.

Phase II testing was conducted in 1993. A systematic surface collection was done at both loci. A dense concentration of artifacts surrounded the Jones house foundation. Sixty-four shovel test pits were then excavated at the house loci, while nine were dug in the western loci. Three test units were then excavated. Test Unit #1 was placed to expose the Jones house foundation. Artifacts recovered from the builder’s trench suggested c. 1900 construction date, after George Jones had inherited the property from his father. Test Unit #2 was placed on the inside of the house foundation. Burned materials and fill indicated that the house ruins had been graded after the 1978 fire. The basement had cement-finished walls and a cement floor with a drain, supporting a 20th-century date for the structure. Based on the archaeology and the land records, it was probably built between 1890 and 1910. Artifacts from 1865 to 1890 were scarcer than expected, so it was most likely not the site of the John A. Jones house, which may have been located at 18MO385, roughly 600 feet away.

Test Unit #3 was placed in the western artifact locus. The recovered artifacts were all 20th century in date, and no features were noted. This was probably the location of a frame tenant house between 1900 and 1930.

Given the 20th-century date of 18MO383, no further work was recommended for the site.

(Written by Ed Chaney)