John Rice Jones, the first lawyer in Illinois, was eminently successful. He was born in Wales in 1759, received a collegiate education at Oxford, England, and afterward took regular courses in both medicine and law. In 1783 he was a lawyer in London and owned property in Wales. The next year he came to Philadelphia where he practiced law and became acquainted with Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, Myers Fisher, and other distinguished men. In 1786 he came to Kentucky and joined Clark's troops against the Wabash Indians. A garrison was irregularly established at Vincennes and Jones was made commissary-general. He sold seized Spanish goods to partially indemnify those whose goods had been seized by the Spanish. In 1790 Jones removed to Kaskaskia, bringing to his residence on the frontier a mind well trained by education and experience. He early became a large landowner, in 1808 paying taxes on 16,400 acres in Monroe county alone. The list of offices held by Jones shows him to have been prominent wherever he went. He was attorney-general of the Northwest Territory, a member and president of the legislative council of the same, joint-revisor with John Johnson, of the laws of Indiana Territory, one of the first trustees, as well as a chief promoter, of Vincennes University, official interpreter and translator of French for the commissioners appointed to settle land claims at Kaskaskia, and after his removal to Missouri, about 1810, a member of the Missouri Constitutional Convention of 1820, and, upon the admission of the state, justice of its Supreme Court until his death in February, 1824. In Missouri he engaged in lead mining and smelting with Moses Austin and later with Austin's sons. He made an exhaustive report on the lead mines of Missouri in 1816. Jones was well versed in English, French and Spanish law, especially in regard to land titles. He was an excellent mathematician, and had also a thorough acquaintance with the Greek, Latin, French, Spanish, English, and Welsh languages. The pioneers recognized his peculiar fitness for a legal career on the frontier. Governor Reynolds, a fellow-townsman of Jones, says: "Judge Jones lived a life of great activity and was conspicuous and prominent in all the important transactions of the country ... His integrity, honor, and honesty were always above doubt or suspicion. He was exemplary in his moral habits, and lived a temperate and orderly man in all things."(548)