Mrs. Emaline Jones died in Saginaw on 21 September 1897 at the age of seventy-three, her obituary noting that she had been born in New York on 3 April 1824 and had made her home in Michigan for most of her adult life.¹ Her death record gives a more sobering picture, stating that she died of asthenia, with poverty, lack of care, and old age listed as contributing causes.² Together, these records frame the story of a woman whose life followed the familiar nineteenth-century path from New York to the developing communities of central Michigan—and whose final years were marked by hardship.
Her name appears in the records in more than one form. While she is most often Emaline or Emeline Goff, some sources render the surname as Groff, a variation that likely reflects pronunciation rather than a true change of identity.³
Emaline was born in New York, the daughter of George Groff.⁴ Like many young women of her generation, she was in Michigan by her late teens. Her first known child, Sarah Thursa Hibbner, was born in Michigan in 1842, indicating an early migration westward.⁵ This movement fits the larger pattern of settlement into the interior counties of the state during the 1830s and 1840s.
By the early 1850s she had married Thomas J. Jones, and together they built their family in Genesee, Shiawassee, and Clinton Counties before eventually moving into Saginaw County. Their son Isaac was born at Flushing in 1853, followed by additional children over the next decade: George, Aaron, Elizabeth Ann, and Matthew Francis.⁶
The federal census traces the family through these years of growth and relocation. In 1860 they were in Middlebury Township, Shiawassee County.⁷ By 1870 and again in 1880 they were living at Ovid in Clinton County, where Thomas worked and the children grew to adulthood.⁸ These were years when Ovid was a small but active agricultural community, and the Jones family’s presence there places them among the settlers who transformed the region from frontier to established farmland.
Thomas died in 1893 in Spaulding Township, Saginaw County.⁹ His death marked a turning point. Within four years Emaline herself was gone, and the language of her death record suggests that widowhood brought real economic difficulty.
Her obituary nevertheless emphasized the family she left behind: sons Isaac, Aaron, and Matthew, and two daughters, identified as Mrs. Lester and Mrs. Showers.¹ This brief list reflects a common practice of the time—married daughters were named by their husbands’ surnames—yet it also shows that most of her children survived her, a significant fact in an era when child mortality was high.
She was buried on 22 September 1897 in Spaulding Township, beside her husband.¹⁰
Emaline’s life spans a period of enormous change. Born in New York in the 1820s, she came to Michigan when it was still a young state, raised her children as its towns and farms took shape, and died in the closing years of the nineteenth century in the industrializing Saginaw Valley. Her story is one of migration, family building, repeated moves in search of stability, and, at the end, the vulnerability that so often accompanied old age when family support or financial resources were limited.
Sources
- “Mrs. Emeline Jones,” obituary, The Saginaw News, 21 September 1897.
- Michigan death certificate, Emaline Jones, 21 September 1897, Saginaw, Saginaw County.
- Name variants as recorded in census and vital records, 1860–1897.
- Parent identified in compiled genealogical material and supported by surname usage in early records.
- Birth of Sarah Thursa Hibbner, Michigan, 1842.
- Michigan birth and marriage records for the children of Thomas J. and Emaline Jones.
- 1860 U.S. census, Middlebury Township, Shiawassee County, Michigan.
- 1870 and 1880 U.S. censuses, Ovid, Clinton County, Michigan.
- Michigan death record, Thomas J. Jones, 19 October 1893, Spaulding Township, Saginaw County.
- Burial record, Spaulding Township, Saginaw County, Michigan, 22 September 1897.
