George Jones

I am just now getting around to reporting on my different discoveries while in Salt Lake City Family History Library last month. I spent some time working with George Ott, one of the consultants that the tour makes available to their participants. He is a great researcher that my sister and I have worked with often in the past. I now hove a sad story about the George Jones/Jane Langley family. Immigration was always difficult but for George and Jane it was probably unbearable.
If you have read my post “George Jones where are you?” you might recall the two boys Alfred Langley Jones and Walter Jones. They are my 2x great grandmother Ada Jane Jones’s younger brothers. Alfred Langley Jones was born in England in 12 March 1841  and Walter Jones was born 8 July 1843. While in Liverpool prior to the family sailing to the United States on the 7th of March, George and Jane had their two boys baptized at the parish church of St. Peter.

The Ships manifest for the Franconia shows their arrival on 22 April 1844 in New York and sailing out of Liverpool. What I have now discovered is that on May 3 just  eleven days later Alfred died and only 5 short days later the infant Walter died.

How crushing to have made that rigorous trip and then to have your two youngest children die before they were even established here. The death records shows they were both buried in Potters Field, meaning they had no money to pay for any kind of formal burial. At the time of their death the family was living at 308 Water Street. Was there some kind of housing there or were they living in some kind of immigrant facilities? When you go to google maps the Brooklyn Bridge is there today. When the family came into New York Harbor the ships anchorage may have been very close by. The bridge construction did not begin until 1869 and was completed 13 years later. Nearby is Immigrant Park and at pier 15 is the Wavertree, a 4 masted schooner out of Liverpool.