Life Before Congress
Jones was born in Vincennes, Indiana. He was the son of John Rice Jones, who became active in efforts directed toward the introduction of slavery to the country north of the Ohio River. When George was six years old, his father moved the family to Missouri Territory, recently acquired from France as part of the Louisiana Purchase. As a child he served as a drummer for a volunteer company in the War of 1812. He later moved to Kentucky where he attended Transylvania University in 1825, and returned to Missouri to study law with his brother. After he was admitted to the bar and had practiced law for a short time, he went to work at Sinsinawa Mound, then in Michigan Territory, where he mined lead and worked and a storekeeper. He returned to Missouri, where he courted and married seventeen-year-old Josephine Gregiore in 1829. In 1831 Jones returned to Sinsinawa with his wife, seven slaves and several French laborers, to resume lead mining.
In 1832, Jones fought the Sauk and Fox Indians in the Black Hawk War, in which his brother-in-law Felix St Vrain was murdered. Jones was a judge in the local county court.
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