Searching the cemetery: ‘Everything is findable’

For The Madera Tribune

Raymond, CA, around the time that Henry Jones shot himself in the town’s blacksmith shop.

---

Henry S. Jones is buried in the Raymond Cemetery. My grandson, Milo, and I ran across his grave on one of our cemetery excursions. Since his marker didn’t tell us anything about him but his birth and death dates, we decided do some research just to see what we could find out about this man who lay almost anonymously beneath this tombstone. It didn’t take us long to discover that “Everything is findable.”

Henry Jones should have been a happy man. He had a good job as a hostler in the town of Raymond, where he and his bride had set up housekeeping. They had been married by Justice of the Peace Joe Barcroft on May 25, 1904. He was 26; she was 19.

Henry and Ida had their first child, Roy, a year after they were married. Their second son, Ronald, came along in 1907, and that’s when things turned sour. Ida inexplicably took off for San Francisco, leaving her husband to care for their boys.