Mary Montfort Jones, wife of revolutionary patriot, Willie Jones. Willie and Mary Jones lived at The Grove in Halifax, North Carolina. She was the daughter of Priscilla Hill and Col. Joseph Montfort, the Provincial Grand Master Mason of America.

Although no stone remains, the burial was cited by DAR in 1914: "Buried in the old graveyard adjoining the house are the young daughter of Willie Jones; Mrs. Elizabeth Montfort Ashe; her husband, John Baptista Ashe; and Mrs. Willie Jones." (p.867)

See: Proceedings of the Twenty-Third Continental Congress of Daughters of the American Revolution, Washington DC, 20-25 Apr 1914. State Regents Report. P. 867.

There may be some dispute to this burial though Mary Montfort Jones lived at the Grove until her death. Sallie Long Jarman noted that she might have been buried in what was known as "Quankey Cemetery" aka "Churchyard Cemetery" or at the Grove. Apparently, there was an old cemetery near Quankey Creek Bridge on a little hill. This was on the south side of Quankey Creek, "near the old county road bridge."

Mary Montfort Jones' Obituary:

'If you have tears to shed, prepare to shed them now.'

Never was the electric chain, wherewith we are darkly bound, so keenly and so sternly smote, as in the late lamented death of Mrs. Mary M. Jones, a matron, the perfection of whose character neutralizes the language of eulogy and silences the voice of praise. We bow in silent reverence at the mention of that venerated name, and shrink in despair from the task of delineating the virtues which adorn it; yet a heart that has long known and felt the soothing influence of those virtues, whose darkest and dreariest shades have often been relieved by the halo that ever dwelt around her spirit, would fain seek in the expression of its sorrow a temporary refuge from the grief which oppresses it. If ever the universal homage of the living was due to the memory of departed goodness, hers cannot fail to command all hearts that beat and breathe within that sphere, to which her genius moved and shone. The spirit of an angel, clothed with the habiliments of mortality, she seemed a link between the frail creatures of the earth and the beings of superior bourne. There was one of those heads which Guide has often painted, mild, plain, penetrating—free from all commonplace ideas, of fat, contented ignorance, looking downwards on the earth; it looked forward; but looked as if looking at something beyond this world. The dew of heaven was not more kind to the withering grass than was her presence to the parched and wearied heart; her home, like a fairy region, where all the harsh and stormy passions of the world were silenced, furnished a resting place to the soul; all that we know and can conceive of hospitality was there dispensed, with a heart whose philanthropy knew no bounds, and 'a hand open as day to melting charity.'

But she is gone, her voice will never again welcome the coming guest, nor her hand relieve the sufferings of the needy; the brightest and mildest star in our moral firmament has set forever. I stood beside her aged and exhausted form a few hours after 'the spirit was not there'—how different the attitude from that in which I had recently before observed it, then moving majestically along the current of life, attended by all its graces, and dispensing all its blessings; and now in 'cold obstruction.' I never beheld a face so intelligent and serene in death; it wore to the last those felicitous traits of expression, which illumined it when living.

'On life itself she was so still and fair
That death with gentler aspect withered there;
As if she scarcely felt, but feigned a sleep,
And made almost mockery yet to weep.
He who hath bent him o'er the dead
Ere the first day of death is fled,
The first dark day of nothingness,
The last of danger and distress,
(Before decay's effacing fingers
Have swept the lines where beauty lingers.)
And marked the mild angelic air,
The rapture of repose that's there,
And fixed yet tender traits that streak
The languor of the placid cheek,
Some moments, ay, one treacherous hour,
He still might doubt the tyrant's power,
So fair, so calm, so softly sealed,
The first last look by death revealed;
A gilded halo hovering round decay,
The farewell beam of felling past away!'

I gazed upon that aspect without tears, for I read in its attitude the moral of her life, and almost fancied that I still communed with an animated being but for the sad and shrouded eye, I had yet doubted whether her spirit had flown—

'Oh, o'er the eye death most exerts his might,
And hurls the spirit from her throne of light!'

Sainted Spirit: Fare thee well—'there have been tears and bursting hearts for thee;' and mine though riven with its own affliction, hath bled, and would have died for thee—

'Farewell! A word that must be, and hath been—
A sound which makes us linger;--
Yet farewell!'

'From lisping infancy, to stooping age,' all praise and pray for thee, 'beloved while living, and revered now gone.'

This obituary appeared in the Halifax "Free Press" on September 2, 1825. The issue from which it was taken was given to the North Carolina Historical Society in Raleigh by Sallie Welsh Long Jarman (Mrs. Fontaine G. Jarman).