A Praying Mother

by John Comer

When I first got interested in genealogy several years ago, I sternly warned my wife not to expect me to help find her ancestors. Who could possibly do Jones genealogy? There are so many of them!

At that time, little did either of us know that in 1899, 82-year-old Smith Drury Jones, who had been married to Nancy Lowry for 62 years and 15 days, and had been a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church for 64 years, had set himself down in Bartholomew County, Indiana, to record a history of himself, his wife, their parents, and grandparents.

His family story began in Wales, then moved on to the James River in Virginia, to Kentucky and points west. Here was a Jones family which kept up with the Joneses. Of himself, Smith D. says, “. . . when I was 19 years of age I was able to buy 40 acres of land at Congress price $1.25 per acre. So when I became 21 years of age I began to conclude to marry.”

As a teenager he had assumed the responsibility for his widowed mother. Later, he and his wife continued to care for her until her death. As he writes, past four-score years old now himself, he says of her, “I always loved dear Mother,” and “I have always been thankful for a praying mother.”

None of us is given the luxury of selecting our ancestors. We take what we find, and when we undertake a genealogical search, there’s always an element of risk. All ancestors will not be like Smith and his Jones tribe. It’s encouraging to know there were (and are) teenagers with a sense of family responsibility. It’s comforting to read about mothers who pray.

Smith and Nancy were good people, worth all the bother they’ve caused my wife and me through the years as we have kept safely stored the two very large photos in ornate frames, of the two of them. It’s a pleasure to have them in the family. There are five generations now descended from them, and there is every reason to believe their Christian influence has touched each one.

Timothy probably didn’t have a painted likeness of his mother Eunice or grandmother Lois. This may have seemed too much like a graven image for good Jewish people. But he did have the faith that first lived in his grandmother, then his mother, and which the Apostle Paul was confident, lived on in Timothy himself. Let’s all of us who’ve had praying mothers join Smith D. Jones, and Timothy, in thanking God for them.