By Kay S. Pedrotti The recent celebration of Veterans Day, marking the end of World War I on Nov. 11, 1918, becomes even more meaningful with discovery of photos brought home from Europe by Sam Paul Jones of Barnesville. Jones’s daughter, Christine Williams of Barnesville, brought the photos to The Herald Gazette and talked about her father’s service in the U.S. Army in World War I. She said she can remember that as a child she marched in Veterans Day parades with her father. Jones served mostly in France, said Williams. Born in Newnan, he ‘married and settled down in Barnesville in 1927,’ she added. Her mother’s name was Mary Lizzie Ross who died young of a heart attack at age 49. Sam Paul Jones died in 1981 at 84, after 43 years in the cutting room at Carter’s Mill. Williams recently found the photos among her father’s things and thought other people might want to see them and honor the memory of those Doughboys who suffered mustard gas and innumerable illnesses and injuries in the trenches in Europe. Theirs is an Army family, Williams said. Her brother Douglas Jones served in the Army in World War II, her husband James Matthew Williams served in the Army and then her son James Larry Williams made a career of the Army, retiring at age 38 after 20 years, including two tours in Vietnam. Christine said her father was ‘a well-traveled man’ who left home at age 15 and ‘hoboed’ through all 48 states. Marriage and the war settled him, she said, and the large loving family grew up on a farm. ’These pictures are what we have to remember his service to his country,’ she said. ‘I wanted to share them.’
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