Samuel Minot Jones (1836-1912) was a Chicago lumber merchant, Civil War soldier, and philanthropist who founded the Jones Library in Amherst, Massachusetts. The Jones family included Thomas Jones (1787-1853), textile mill owner; his wife, Mary Hubbard Field French Jones (1804-1879); their son Samuel Minot Jones (1836-1912); their daughter Augusta Thayer Jones (1845-1884); Samuel’s wife Harriet Watson Stenger Jones (1873-1907); and Samuel and Harriet’s only son Minot Jones (1899-1918). Samuel’s father Thomas moved to Amherst with his wife Mary and their children after the 1837 failure of his mill in Enfield, Massachusetts. They built a new home on Amity Street and developed mills in North Amherst. This time the mills did not fail. The family prospered until the death of Thomas in 1853. Samuel worked at George Cutler’s dry goods store in Amherst to support himself and learn business. He soon decided to go west to earn his fortune, moving to Illinois and learning the lumber trade.

When the Civil War broke out, Jones enlisted in 1861 at age 25. After serving with distinction and taking part in two memorable battles, Pea Ridge in Arkansas and Stones River in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, where he was wounded, Jones resigned and returned to his mother’s Amherst home to recuperate. Following his recovery, Jones returned to Chicago to partner with Charles Barton in the lumber business. During the Great Chicago Fire in 1871, Jones’s quick thinking to hire two fire engines from outside the city saved his lumberyard, one of the few to escape destruction. His fortune secure, Jones retired to Morristown, New Jersey, in 1894. In 1898 he married Harriet Stenger and the following year a son, Minot, was born. Harriet Jones never fully recovered from the birth of Minot and died in 1907. Samuel Jones died five years later leaving the bulk of his estate to his son Minot when the boy reached 21, the age of majority. Unfortunately, Minot contracted influenza in an army training camp and died in 1918 at age 19.