The tiny hamlet of Little Rock, Mississippi has produced its share of interesting and colorful characters over the years. One of the most interesting Little Rock natives comes from the Alex Jones clan. Descendants of Alex Jones have been a part of the fiber of Little Rock, since the small village was founded. Descendants of Alex Jones still reside in and around Little Rock. Mr. Simmie Jones’s descendants are perhaps the best known of the original clan Jones. Because of the number of daughters born to Simmie and Ora Jones, many of his descendants wear the names, Watson, Hand, Goforth, Rigdon, Hagan and Clearman.
Simmie Jones’s brother Richard Jones had a daughter Letty, born July 2, 1896. Lettie had a yearning for more adventure than Little Rock, Mississippi, had to offer. After graduating from high school at Little Rock, she attended Agriculture School in Decatur for one year. A great accomplishment for any young woman of that era. At the beginning of World War I, she met and married a French musician by the name of Bud Tidwell. Bud died of the flu while in boot camp in Louisiana. Broken-hearted Letty held his hand as he took his last breath.
Lettie refuse to allow her grief to define her. She said goodbye to Little Rock and enrolled in college at Texas A&I University in Kingsville, Texas. She later transferred to a business college in Little Rock, Arkansas where she graduated. She had planned to attend art school in Chicago, but instead, she married her childhood sweetheart, Robert Collier Motley on Thanksgiving Day, 1921. From here, Letty’s life became an adventure that few can match. The following September, Letty heard about land available for homesteading in Utah. Lottie, her new husband, and another couple headed west in a T-model Ford.
With no money in their pockets, they arrived at Point Summit, Utah a month later on October 10. It didn’t take Letty and Robert long to find a spot they felt was suitable for homesteading. They dumped their belongings, staked their claim, and called it home. After surviving the winter in a crude dugout for a home, they built their dirt-floor log cabin and planted the ten acres they had cleared for the winter dugout and new log cabin.
Over the next three years, Lottie and Robert worked at different jobs just to make enough money to survive on. Life was not easy for Letty and Robert in the forest of Utah, but then they didn’t expect it to be. After twenty-five years of hard work and pioneer lifestyle, Robert could take no more. The couple divorced. The love of the land kept Letty on the homestead where she dealt with her share of hardships. Other homesteaders gave it up and moved away, leaving Lettie virtually alone in the forest without neighbors. Life was not kind to Lettie, but Lettie was an ordinary woman. She suffered a broken back from being thrown from her horse. Her leg was broken in an automobile wreck but giving up was not an option for Letty Jones.
Lettie raised a garden, she even grew wheat and her own cattle. She milked her cows and separated the cream from the milk and shipped the cream to Grand Junction to be sold. She even trapped and sold pelts as a source of cash income. Lettie managed her money well. She bought more land and increased the size of her beef cattle herd. As her operation outgrew her, she hired men to work on her ranch where she worked side by side with them. Lettie could drive a tractor and bail hay with the best of them.
She met an old Irishman named Mickey O’Neil at the post office. One day, she and Mickey were walking along a trail on Mickey’s land, when she spotted an odd colored rock. She picked up the rock and inspected it but had no idea what she was holding in her hand. Her inquiring mind had to know more. She had it analyzed and as it turns out, the rock was uranium. Uranium was found on her property as well.
Before Mickey died, he had deeded his uranium rich land to Letty. The uranium made Letty a rich woman overnight. Letty said the money caused her some problems in her life, but never elaborated on what those problems were. Someone asked her if she wanted to be buried on the land where the uranium was found. “No. With all the uranium out there, I’m afraid they’d dig me up.”
With no children to leave her fortune, Letty wanted to give back. She established the Letty Jones Endowment fund to be used for scholarships for youth of San Juan County, Utah.
“The county has been good to me (with a lot of hard work) and I want to give something back to the county.”
Thanks to Ricky Goforth for information for this article
Ralph Gordon, Past President Mississippi Writers Guild is the recipient of the William Faulkner Literary Award. he can be reached at rgordon512@hotmail.com
