out of many to support this. In a letter to Hewes of May 22, 1778, he says: The great individual obligation I owe you makes it more than ever my duty to keep you personally advised of my movements. I need not assure you that this is a welcome duty, much as I deplore the cause of it, for the reason that I know there is no person living to whom news of my success can bring more satisfaction than to yourself. And you are surely entitled to such satisfaction because you more than any other person have labored to place the instruments of success in my hands."

Again, writing Hewes under date of November 7, 1778, he says: “Of one thing, in spite of all, you may definitely assure yourself, and that is I will not accept any command or enter into any arrangement, that can in the least bring in question or put out of sight the regular rank I hold in the United States Navy, for which I now, as always, acknowledge my debt to you more than to any other person." These extracts fully establish the truth of the statement before made that Hewes procured Jones his appointment in the navy, a fact which I think is now conceded by every one who has made a study of his career.

There is another fact which goes to corroborate the reasons I have advanced for his change of name, and that is that Paul Jones was appointed to the Continental Navy from the State of North Carolina. In the 21st volume of the Colonial and State Records, page 527, is a letter from Hon. Robert Burton, of Granville county, then a member of Congress, to Governor Samuel Johnston, dated January 28, 1789. It is as follows:

"Dear Sir:

As those who have fought and bled for us in the late contest cannot be held in too high esteem, and as Chevalier John Paul Jones is among the foremost who derived their appointment from this State that deserves to be held in remembrance to the latest Ages, I take the liberty of offering to the State as a present thro' you, its chief Magistrate, the Bust of that great man and good soldier to perpetuate his memory. If you do me the honor to accept it, you will please inform me by a line."

To this, Governor Johnston replied, under date of February 19, 1789, that he would readily accept the bust, on be

half of the State, and communicate Mr. Burton's letter to the next General Assembly for its order. Soon after this, November 27, 1789, Governor Johnston was elected to the Senate of the American Congress, and I cannot find that he or his successor, Governor Martin, communicated Mr. Burton's letter to the Assembly. I find among the correspondence of Jones* a letter to Jefferson, dated Paris, March 20, 1791, in which he says that Mr. Burton had asked for his bust in behalf of the State of North Carolina, and that he had ordered Houdon to prepare and forward it by the first ship from Havre de Grace to Philadelphia addressed to Jefferson, and he asked him to give it to the North Carolina delegates to forward to the governor of that State. Jefferson answered this letter under date of August 31, 1791, but made no answer or reference to this request. After much inquiry, I am forced to the conclusion that the matter dropped right here, and, as Paul Jones died July 18, 1792, that the bust was never presented to the State.

All of Jones's biographers, I believe, agree that he came to America in 1773, and most of them, certainly those historians who have written sketches for the newspapers and magazines, assert that he came to take over the estate of his brother, William Paul. Even his niece, Miss Taylor, in her book, page 310, says: "He had recovered, as I know from the best sources, several thousand pounds from the wreck of his brother's fortune in Virginia." This statement cannot be reconciled with the indisputable facts, that William Paul left his entire estate to his sister, Mary Lowden, and her two eldest children, that William Paul did not die, and his will was not admitted to probate, until late in the year 1774, at least a year after Jones came to America, and that a stranger was allowed to administer upon it. I am informed by the clerk of Spottsylvania county, that no account of the administration or distribution of this estate can be found among the records of his court, but as a bond of only £500 was required of the administrator, the personal estate could not have exceeded £250.

*Sherbourne, page 327.

Jones himself ascribes another reason for his coming to America, and as it tends to support the fact I am striving to prove, I shall give it. In a letter to Robert Morris, dated September 4, 1776, he says: "I conclude that Mr. Hewes has acquainted you with a very great misfortune which befell me some years ago and which brought me into North America. I am under no concern whatever that this, or any other past circumstance of my life, will sink me in your opinion."

Sherbourne, in commenting on this letter, most truly says: "The misfortune of which he speaks could not have implicated his moral character, or he would not have enjoyed the confidence of the Honorable Mr. Hewes, to whom, as Jones informed Mr. Morris, the particulars were known.” I have no doubt that this misfortune to which Jones alludes was the death of Maxwell, which was charged against him in England as murder.

There is still another fact, lightly touched upon by the writers, which supports my views. In a letter to Mr. Stuart Mawey, of Tobago, dated May 4, 1777, and given in full by Miss Taylor in her book, page 25, Jones says: "After an unprofitable suspense of twenty months (having subsisted on £50 only during that time), when my hopes of relief were entirely cut off, and there remained no possibility of my receiving wherewithal to subsist upon from my effects in your Island, or in England, I at last had recourse to strangers for that aid and comfort, which was denied me by those friends, whom I had entrusted with my all. The good offices which are rendered to persons in their extreme need ought to make deep impressions on grateful minds; in my case, I feel the truth of that sentiment, and am bound by gratitude as well as honor to follow the fortunes of my late benefactors.

I wish to disbelieve it, although it seems too much of a piece with the unfair advantage which to all appearance he took of me, when he left me in exile for twenty months a prey to melancholy and want." This period "of unprofitable suspense," during which he eked out existence for twenty months on bare £50, and which doubtless was as gall and wormwood to his proud spirit, must have been that "period

of obscurity" between 1773 and 1775, which was as a sealed book to all of his biographers save Buell, and the period of which he spent a large part at the homes of Allen and Willie Jones. I think I am justified in saying, that they were the "benefactors" to whom he alluded, and that his declarations that he "was bound by gratitude as well as honor to follow" their fortunes, was intended as an explanation of his having adopted the cause of the colonies as his own. If Jones had acquired that valuable plantation in Virginia from his brother and William Jones, as Buell says he did, could he have complained that he had been left "in exile for twenty months a prey to melancholy and want" with but £50 for his subsistence during that period, and have spoken only of his property in Tobago and England.

Having treated him with such gross neglect and base ingratitude during his life, it is but a fitting sequel that this great republic should now surround his last interment with all that pomp and glory which would have been so grateful to him in life. Neglected in life and exalted after deathsuch, alas, is too often the tardy and empty tribute awarded by our people to our great men.

In a few modest words, Jones has summed up the value of his services to this country. Miss Taylor (page 548) says the following, in his own handwriting, was found after his death among his papers: "In 1775, I, Paul Jones, armed and embarked in the first American ship of war. In the Revolution, he had 23 battles and solemn recountres by sea; made seven descents in Britain and her colonies; took of her navy two ships of equal, and two of far superior force, many store ships and others; constrained her to fortify her forts; suffer the Irish volunteers (meaning the embodying of the militia in Ireland not before allowed, J. D.), desist from her cruel burnings in America, and exchange, as prisoners of war, the American citizens, taken on the ocean and cast into prisons in England as traitors, pirates and felons. In his perilous situation in Holland, his conduct drew the Dutch into the war, and eventually abridged the Revolution."

What more fitting epitaph for the grand column of marble, which will be erected over his ashes at Annapolis, can be

proposed than this? He has written his own epitaph, and it should be adopted to point out the story of his life to the future officers of our navy.

In an article written by Mr. J. H. Myrover, of Fayetteville, N. C., which lately appeared in the Wilmington Messenger, and which prompted me to write this article, he virtually stated that in his opinion there was no foundation for the tradition that John Paul took the name of Jones out of his affection for Willie Jones and his wife. Emanating from such an accomplished and well known writer, and one so well informed in the history of his State, this declaration must have attracted attention and may some day be cited for authority. For this, and other apparent reasons, I have thought it would be well within the scope of this article to sketch briefly the political standing and influence of Willie Jones at the breaking out of the Revolution. One reason given by Mr. Myrover, for his disbelief, was that Willie Jones "was, if anything, a younger man than John Paul Jones; and though always a great man, Willie Jones had not reached the zenith of his power and political influence until John Paul had been sleeping in his grave for some years in Paris." I do not know the date of the birth of Willie Jones, but he was only two or three years younger than his brother, General Allen Jones, who was born in 1739. Willie Jones was aide de camp and captain on Tryon's staff during the war of the Regulators. He was a member of the General Assemblies of 1770, 1771, 1772, 1773, 1774, and also a delegate to the first and second Provincial Congresses. As early as 1773, he was the friend and associate of Cornelius Harnett, John Harvey, Samuel Johnston, William Hooper, Maurice Moore, Joseph Hewes, Hugh Waddell, Abner Nash, Thos. Person, Thomas Jones and others of like fame and influence. John Harvey, "the great moderator," was then the acknowledged leader of the patriots, and the man to whom all looked for the initiative in all important undertakings. It is generally conceded that we owe to him that celebrated convention-the first Provincial Congress-which met at New Bern in 1774. Governor Martin had dissolved the General Assembly and determined not to call it together again. This