Tignal W. Jones

Tignal W. Jones, Confederate soldier, was born near Lewisburg, Franklin County, North Carolina, on November 25, 1820, the son of Willis H. and Mary H. (Taylor) Jones. After graduating from Nashville University in Tennessee, he read law in the Tuskegee, Alabama, offices of William P. Chilton, chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, and in 1844 was admitted to the state bar of Alabama. He then formed a partnership with Franklin W. Bowden and practiced until the outbreak of the Mexican War, whereupon he was commissioned first lieutenant of Company E, First Alabama Volunteer Infantry. He served in Gen. Winfield Scott's army during the campaign in central Mexico and participated in the siege of Veracruz and the battles leading up to the capture of Mexico City.

Jones returned to Alabama at the end of the war and in 1848 formed a partnership in Talladega with J. L. M. Curry, afterward United States ambassador to Spain. In 1854 he married Mary E. Barclay, who died six months later. In 1856 he moved to Texas, where he established a practice at Tyler. On December 18 of that year he married Mrs. Martha Marsh Bell; the couple had one child who survived infancy, a daughter. In March 1861

Jones was elected to the state Secession Convention. When it ended on March 25, he enlisted as a private in the Confederate Army, but was later commissioned as colonel and commander of the First Cavalry Regiment, Texas State Troops. These troops, under state rather than Confederate control, served on the coast and the western frontier. They saw no action against federal forces and were generally loosely organized, ill disciplined, and largely inefficient. When the Civil War ended, Jones returned to his Tyler law pracice. He is buried in Oakwood Cemetery, Tyler.