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Dr. George Martin Jones (1867 – 1943), the third of six children of Joseph M. and Sarah Elizabeth (Gibbs) Jones, came to Springtown with his family in 1876. They settled on a farm about a mile south of town. George attended College Hill Institute in Springtown. Ruth Peterson (1870 – 1958), the second of three children of Dr. Owen G. and Elizabeth (Dubois) Peterson, came to Springtown in 1889 to join her father and attend College Hill Institute. George and Ruth married at Springtown Methodist Church in 1891, the second couple to marry in the newly-constructed frame church which George helped to build.
Ruth and George were both teachers at Clear Fork before he entered medical school in Louisville, Kentucky. His practice in Springtown flourished, and Dr. Jones was a member of the county and state medical societies. He and Ruth were both active in the Methodist Church; Dr. Jones helped finance and build the church’s rock-faced sanctuary across the street from their house, and Ruth was a Sunday School teacher and charter member of the Women’s Missionary Society. They had two sons.
Dr. and Mrs. Jones had this house built in 1915. The two-story frame building is designed as a variation of the American Foursquare style with a Neoclassical façade. Notable features include a modified square floor plan with pyramidal roof, full gallery porch with ionic columns, dormer windows, and offset front door with swan neck pediment and sidelights. The porch on the south side of the house was the entrance leading to Dr. Jones’ medical office. The house remained in the Jones family until 1956. It remains a prominent example of a historic architectural residence in Springtown.
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