CHAMBERLAYNE JONES. The constitutional district that included the present county of Jefferson sent as its delegate to the constitutional convention, Mr. Chamberlayne Jones, of Ryan, one of the leading lawyers of southern Oklahoma and prominent in public affairs in town and county. In the convention he was chairman of the committee on privileges and elections, and a member of the committee on federal relations and on public buildings, labor and arbitration, impeachment and removal from office, salaries and compensation of public officers.
     Mr. Jones has been a resident of Ryan for over ten years. He began the study of law here with W. A. Dunn and was admitted to the bar February 22, 1898, after an examination before Judge Hosea Townsend, United States district judge. For four years he was in partnership with his old preceptor. He won his first case at law, securing the discharge, before the United States commissioner, of a man charged with arson. His court work covers Jefferson and contiguous counties, and his professional acquaintance also extends across the Red river into Texas. He has been admitted to practice in the supreme court of Oklahoma since statehood. In Ryan he is identified with all movements for the best welfare. of that little city. He has served two terms as mayor of Ryan.
     Chamberlayne Jones was born in Fannin county, Texas, June 1, 1872, and he spent his youth on a farm. The country schools and the Columbia College at Van Alstyne, Texas, where he spent one term, furnished him his preliminary education, and for a year before he moved to Ryan he was engaged in teaching school. Mr. Jones belongs to a southern family that has been identified in various noteworthy ways with the respective localities of their residence and with the history of state and nation as well. His grandfather,Ben B. Jones, who died in Alabama, was a graduate of West Point Military Academy and was colonel of a regiment that fought in the famous battle of New Orleans, January 8, 1815. After that war he was engaged in farming in northern Alabama until his comparatively early death. By his wife, who was the daughter ofJudge Haywood of the Tennessee supreme bench, he had the following children: Dr. William C. (mentioned below); Mary, Mrs. Baker, who died in Florida. The widow of Colonel Jones married, again, and her son,Burkett Washington, graduated from West Point, entered the Confederate army, and while commanding a battery of artillery was killed in the battle of Missionary Ridge.
     William C. Jones, only son of the patriot of the war of 1812, and father of the Ryan attorney, was born in 1829 in Lawrence county, Alabama, and in 1853 became a pioneer of Fannin county, Texas, purchasing the Beall plantation on Red river. The war interrupted his successful cultivation, and for a short time he was in the Confederate service. As a young man he had enjoyed splendid educational advantages, in keeping with those usually afforded the sons of the best families of the south, having completed a course in the University of Virginia. After the war, instead of returning to the conduct of his plantation he entered the medical department of Tulane University at New Orleans, and was graduated in medicine and also took postgraduate studies elsewhere. For a time he had an office in Bonham, Texas, but eventually located at Grove Hill, where he passed the remainder of his life, dying in 1903. He was an avid student all his life, broad-minded, and outside of his professional research the social sciences came in for a large share of his attention. He delivered lectures occasionally on such economic subjects as the "graduated income tax." In early life he was somewhat interested in politics, but during the last fifteen years took no part. Dr. Jones married Ellen O. Birmingham. Her father, Patrick Birmingham, of Irish birth, was also a physician, locating in New Orleans in 1820, and for a time was connected with a charity hospital there. He was in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, for a time, and in 1853 moved to Texas. He was engaged in practice for a time at Paris, where he died. Dr. William C. Jones died about five years ago, but his widow still lives, a resident of Hunt county, Texas. Their children were: Amelia, wife of F. A. Boutwell, of Hunt county; Ellen, wife of M. H. Barrett, of Ryan; Pattie, wife of J. R. Wilson, of Leonard, Texas; Rodney, deceased; Chamberlayne, who is best known to acquaintances as "Cham" Jones; Hattie, wife of W. A. Baxter, of Leonard, Texas;Ben B., of El Paso, Texas; James E., of Fannin county; Catherine, wife of Jones Pennington, of Del Rio, Texas; Peter, who died at Del Rio, in 1902; Octavia, wife of B. A. Marcum, of Anna, Texas; Marcella, who died in 1903, aged seventeen; and Egbert, in Leonard. Mr. Chamberlayne Jones married, in Ryan, March 7, lS99, Miss Ada, daughter of T. F. Pool, a farmer and stockman of Ryan, formerly from Louisiana. They have three children: Ila, Marcella and Morris Chamberlayne.