Leon Reporter, Leon, Iowa 
Thursday, January 8, l903 


REV. SCOTT JONES, whose work as an evangelist has attracted attention 
throughout southern Iowa, was born in Owen County, Indiana, November 23, 
l853. His boyhood and youth were spent on his father's farm, where he improved 
the meager opportunities and advantages given to the children of those early 
pioneer days. 
Being filled with a desire to see some of the world, and especially the west  of 
which so much had been written and told, he left his home at the age of twenty
-one and came to Decatur County, Iowa, where he remained with his relatives 
during the winter of l874. Here he worked by the day at whatever he could 
find to do, and as there was a great deal of building being done at that time, 
choppers were in demand, and much of the winter was devoted to cutting logs 
in the woods along Grand River. 
In the summer of l875 he started for California and the following nineteen years 
of his life were devoted to the wild experiences incident to the west in those 
early days. Much of the time he was intimately associated with miners and 
cowboys and it was here that he received an insight into the ways of frontier 
life that has since proved so valuable to him in his evangelistic work. 
Among some of the places of historic interest which he visited during his years 
of travel may be mentioned San Francisco, Denver, Santa Cruz, Monterey  
Leadville and Salt Lake City, besides nearly every town of any size that has 
in the past quarter of a century figured in the development of the Pacific coast. 
Filled with the wild enthusiasm of youth, no undertaking seemed too great and 
no risk too hazardous for him to try, and perhaps no man of his age has seen 
more of range life or knows more about the manners and customs of the people 
then living on the plains. 
In l892 the subject of this sketch was united in marriage to MISS NANCY 
EURITT, who for years had been prominently identified with the educational 
work of this county. Surrounded by a family and the gentle influences of home 
life, which bring out the finer qualities of a man's nature, proved to be the turning 
point in his career. His evangelistic work dates from l898, at which time he was 
converted and immediately commenced preaching. 
His style, which is purely one of his own, and his simplicity of expression soon 
won him a reputation, and crowded houses have thronged to hear him wherever 
he goes. No man can state plain facts any more plainly than REV. JONES and 
with his inexhaustible supply of scriptural quotations to establish the truth of what 
he says, holds his audiences and brings sinners to repentance. His zeal, together 
with his genial manner makes him a power for good in any community where he 
works, and many homes have been made happier by the good work that he has 
done in bringing father, husbands and brothers back from the paths of vice, sin 
and drunkenness to the straight and narrow way which leads to life everlasting. 
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Copied by Nancee(McMurtrey)Seifert 
"With permission from the Leon Journal Reporter" 
February 20, 2003