Louis Edward Jones was born at Gibara, Cuba, Dec. 21, 1908, the son of Sylvester and Mae (Mather) Jones, Quaker missionaries from the United States who worked in Cuba from 1900 to 1927 and from 1942 to 1943.  He graduated from Oakwood Friends School in New York in 1926, and entered Earlham College, where he was a student for three years.  He then transferred to the University of Chicago, where he received a B.S. degree in 1930.  He earned a second bachelor’s degree in engineering from MIT in 1932, and the MBA from the University of Chicago in 1956.  He spent his career as an engineer with Montgomery Ward and other businesses in the Chicago area. Mary Ruth (Brown) Jones was born near Greenfield, Indiana, July 12, 1908, the daughter of Orville A. and Harriet (White) Brown.  She attended Earlham College, the fourth generation of her family to do so, from 1926 to 1928, and subsequently earned a degree in library science at the University of Chicago.  She worked as a librarian in Greenfield and in Lombard, Illinois.  On July 23, 1932, she and Louis Jones were married in Chicago. Louis and Mary Ruth, as she was always known, were extremely active in Quaker affairs from the 1930s into the 1990s.  They were among the founding members of the Downers Grove Friends Meeting, and served on committees or boards for Western Yearly Meeting, Illinois Yearly Meeting, the Five Years Meeting (later Friends United Meeting), the Friends World Committee for Consultation, and the Associated Committee of Friends on Indian Affairs. After spending their married life in the Chicago area, the Joneses moved to reside at the Friends Fellowship Community in Richmond, Indiana, in 1988.  Blessed with good health into their nineties, they remained active in Quaker affairs, and Louis continued an extensive genealogical correspondence.  Both died in Richmond, Louis on Feb. 7, 2004, and Mary Ruth on April 10, 2004.

Note written by Thomas Hamm