Like so many of Missouri’s early leaders, John Jones was born in a foreign country. He came from Wales in the late 1700s, an Oxford graduate, a doctor, and a lawyer. He was the first English-speaking lawyer and first Attorney General of what was then the Indiana territory. He helped draft Indiana’s first state constitution. He had been part of George Rogers Clark’s force which took Vincennes in 1786. He stayed there and gained prominence in the then Northwest Territory. In 1789 Jones moved to the Illinois country and in 1809 he became the first practicing lawyer in Illinois Territory. Jones was 41 when he came to Missouri.
