Noble Wimberly Jones

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Noble Wimberly Jones (c. 1723 – January 9, 1805) was an American physician and statesman from Savannah, Georgia. A leading Georgia patriot in the American Revolution, he served as a delegate to the Continental Congress in 1781 and 1782.

Born in Lambeth, England (near London), he immigrated to North America with his parents, who settled in Savannah in 1723, the first group of white settlers of the Province of Georgia. He was often known by his full name to distinguish him from his father, Noble Jones, who became one of the leading officials of the Province of Georgia.

As a youth, Jones often served in the militia under James Oglethorpe, helping to protect the province from Native Americans and the Spanish. Like his father, Jones became a physician, although neither apparently had any formal schooling in the field. He married Sarah Davis in 1755, with whom he would have fourteen children, including son George Jones, who would become a United States Senator from Georgia.

Jones practiced medicine in Savannah from 1756 to 1774. In 1755 he was elected to the province's lower legislative body, the Commons House of Assembly, serving until 1775, when the American Revolution terminated the Assembly's existence. After the 1765 Stamp Act, Jones was an outspoken critic of British policy. First elected Speaker of the House in 1768, he secured the services of Benjamin Franklin as Georgia's agent in London. Royal Governor James Wright saw Jones as a threat to royal authority, and dissolved the Assembly. In the years that followed, Jones was repeatedly elected Speaker, and each time Wright would respond by dissolving the Assembly.

Following the passage of the Intolerable Acts by the British Parliament, in 1775 Jones helped form Georgia's Provincial Congress. He was twice elected as a delegate to the Second Continental Congress in 1775, but he did not attend due to the political turmoil and Georgia and the illness of his father, who died that year. He was a member of the Council of Safety by the end of 1775. When news reached Georgia of the Battles of Lexington and Concord, Jones and several others raided the colony's gunpowder magazine. According to tradition, some of this powder was sent to New England and was used by Patriots at the Battle of Bunker Hill.

When Governor Wright was forced out of Georgia in 1776, Jones and other revolutionaries assumed control of the colony. He helped write Georgia's 1777 state constitution and was elected Speaker of the new House of Assembly. The British recaptured Savannah in 1778, however, and Jones fled to Charleston, South Carolina. There he practiced medicine until, in 1780, the British also captured Charleston. He was held as a prisoner in St. Augustine, Florida, until he was exchanged in 1781. His first available transportation took him to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he was appointed as a delegate to Congress.

He returned to Savannah in 1782 when the British occupation ended at war's end. He continued to practice medicine, and in 1783 was again elected as Speaker of the Georgia House. He was president of state constitutional convention in 1795. He died in Savannah in 1805 and was interred in Bonaventure Cemetery.

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From "Wormsloe"

"Noble Wimberly, in 1755 at the age of 32, married and left Wormsloe for a country estate of his own which he named Lambeth in remembrance of the town near London, where he was born. But his interest in Wormsloe was not far removed, for it was about this time when he received 500 acres adjoining it on the North, and after Mary's death he became master of Wormsloe."

"He (Noble Wimberly Jones) had married in 1755 Sarah Davis of Saint Philip Parish, later included in Chatham and Effingham counties, and to this union had been born fourteen children...Their first-born, Sarah, who married John Glen, bore fourteen children, and his sone George was the father of ten children. But of his own fourteen children, Noble Wimberly Jones and his wife were saddened with the sorrow of seeing thirteen precede them to the grave."

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From: "Abstracts of Wills, Chatham County, Georgia" (Will Book "B", Page 73)

JONES< NOBLE WIMBERLY Physician

Jan. 7, 1805; Jan. 14, 1805

To: Wife - Sarah

To: Son - George

To: Grandson - Noble Wimberly Jones

To: Grand daughter - Sarah Gibbons Jones and Catherine Jones Glen

To: Grand Son In-Law - Archibald Bullock, Esqr.

Mention: His wharf lot and stores under the bluff and "nearly opposite my present residence", and town lot on the Bay on which I lived previously to the fire of 1795."

Exrs: wife, Sarah; sone, George; neph., Dr James Glen; gr.son, Noble Wimberly Jones.

Wit: James Grimes, Matew McAllister, Moses Sheftall

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From: "georgia's Landmarks, Memorials and Legends":

"underneath a block of marble, at the end of Palmetto Drive, rest the ashes of Dr. Noble Wimberly Jones, one of the earliest of the Revolutionary patriots. His name was attached to the famouse cardcalling the Sons of Liberty to meet for the first time in Tondee's tavern; and he was afterwards chosen a member of the first delegation to represent Georgia in the Continental Congress, but he did not repair to Philadelphia, on account of the critical illness of his father, who died a few months later. Dr. Jones first incurred the displeasure of the Crown in 1770, when his strong republican sentiments caused him to be deposed from the Speakership of the House of Assembly; but his zeal in the cause of independence knw no abatement. The grave of the old patriot is enclosed by an iron fence. It likewise fronts the open expanse looking toward Wormsloe. The inscription on the well-preserved horizontal slab reads as follows:

Concsecrated to the memory of DOCTOR NOBLE WIMBERLEY JONES, who died January 9th., 1805. He was born in England, came over with General Oglethorpe in the year 1733, at the first settlement of this State. He served as cadet officer in Oglethorpe's Regiment during the wars with Spaniards and Indians, at that period. Acquired his professional education afterwards under the immediate direction of his fater, Noble Jones, the fried, copanion, and co-laborer of Oglethorpe. He was amoung the earliest and most strenuous asserters of the liberties of his adopted country and filled not only the Professional but the most important Civil Departments with merit to himself and the highest value and satifaction to the community. The warm friend, the patient, judicious, and successful physician, the most affectionate husband, and a pure, and humble and sicere Christian. In the midst of usefulness, and vigourous old age, he died as he lived, without fear and without reproach. This monument has beenerected by the filial gratitude of his surving son, as a tribute to virtue."

(ca. 1723-1805)-  Born in England in the early 1720s, Noble Wimberly Jones came to Savannah in 1733 with his parents, Sarah Hack Jones and Noble Jones,  Noble W. Jones was prominent among Georgia's Whig leaders before and during the American Revolution, serving in both the provincial and state legislatures and in the Continental Congress. Portrait by Charles Willson Peale, circa 1781.Courtesy of the Wormsloe Foundation Noble W. Jones and his sister, Mary, all members of the first group of Georgia colonists. He was trained for a medical career by his father, who also set him an example of government service, though the younger Jones would become as ardent a Whig as the elder proved a confirmed Tory. Like his father, Noble W. Jones accumulated thousands of acres of land, including his estate at Wormsloe, in the young colony. His planting interests, particularly in rice lands along the Ogeechee River, contributed considerably to his income. In 1755 Jones wed Sarah Davis. They had fourteen children, and survived all but one. Their son George, however, would provide them with numerous lineal descendants, among them the branch of the family that took the name De Renne.

In 1755 Jones wed Sarah Davis. They had fourteen children, and survived all but one. Their son George, however, would provide them with numerous lineal descendants, among them the branch of the family that took the name De Renne. The year he married, Jones began his political career with election to the Commons House of Assembly, the lower house of Georgia's provincial legislature, where he would serve until 1775. His most conspicuous service began in the mid-1760s, as controversies erupted over such British taxation measures as the Stamp Act and Sir James Wright, the royal governor, frequently dissolved the lower house. In 1768 Jones was first elected Speaker of the Commons House and was instrumental in the appointment of Benjamin Franklin to act as Georgia's colonial agent in London to convey Georgia's protests to Parliament. Governor Wright viewed Jones as a serious threat to royal authority and thereafter dissolved the Commons House whenever it elected Jones Speaker. Consequently, the defiant Commons House elected Jones repeatedly between 1771 and 1773. The Intolerable Acts (1774) having increased resistance to the crown, Jones and other Whigs met in early 1775 to form Georgia's short-lived Provincial Congress. It named Jones and two others as delegates to the Second Continental Congress, but citing insufficient public support, they did not attend. In May 1775 news of the outbreak of fighting in Massachusetts electrified Georgia's Whigs, and Jones and several other revolutionaries (including Joseph Habersham, John Milledge, and Edward Telfair) broke into Savannah's royal magazine. They seized 600 pounds of gunpowder, some of which apparently made its way to the rebels in Boston. The next Provincial Congress met in July 1775 and again elected Jones a delegate to the Continental Congress, but his father's terminal illness kept him in Savannah, where by year's end he was serving on the Revolutionary Council of Safety. With the royal government's collapse in early 1776, Jones and the Whigs took control of Georgia. He was a member of the convention that created the state's Constitution of 1777, and when the Provincial Congress became the House of Assembly, Jones again was elected Speaker. As the British captured Savannah in 1778, Jones escaped to Charleston, South Carolina, where he worked as a physician until he was captured along with the city in 1780. After imprisonment in St. Augustine, Florida, Jones was transferred through a 1781 prisoner exchange to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. There he served as a Georgia delegate to the Continental Congress while practicing medicine as a protege of Dr. Benjamin Rush. Back in Savannah by 1783, he was soon once more elected the Speaker of the House of Assembly, but the session proved quite disorderly. Having suffered a sword wound while attempting to quell a mob, Jones resigned his office and moved again to Charleston, where he worked as a doctor for five years. Returning to Savannah for good in 1788, Jones was on hand to help supervise the elaborate festivities welcoming President George Washington to Savannah in 1791. In 1795 he presided over the convention that met in Louisville to amend the Georgia Constitution of 1789. This was Jones's last major political act, but he continued his medical practice. In 1804 he helped organize the Georgia Medical Society and became its first president. Though increasingly ill in the early 1800s, Jones practiced medicine until his death. He entered his final illness, in his early eighties, after five consecutive nights of exhausting obstetric cases. In Savannah his death elicited general mourning as well as numerous eulogies, appropriate to both the last survivor of Georgia's original colonists and a principal leader in the colony's struggle for independence.

He died in Savannah in 1805 and was interred in Bonaventure Cemetery.