J. B. Jones

John Beauchamp Jones (March 6, 1810 – February 4, 1866) was a novelist (particularly of the American West and the American South) whose books enjoyed popularity during the mid-19th century and a well-connected literary editor and political journalist in the two decades leading up to the American Civil War. During the war, he served as a senior clerk in the Confederate War Department and is today remembered for his diary, published as A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital.

Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri

Jones was born in Baltimore, Maryland, to Joshua Jones, Jr., one of the defenders of Baltimore during the War of 1812, and Mary Ann Sands. Financial losses overtook the family and prompted a move to Cynthiana, Harrison County, Kentucky in about 1815. Jones traveled to Missouri in 1830 to assist his brother, Joseph, who was opening for his employer—an established merchant in New Franklin—a branch store at Arrow Rock in Missouri's Boonslick region. John Beauchamp Jones participated as a clerk in the enterprise from 1830 until about 1836, with his experience in the role the basis for his novel The Western Merchant, written under the pseudonym Luke Shortfield. Jones's later minor notoriety along with his recital of the details and particulars in The Western Merchant of the store opening may have led to his being solely credited by some sources with establishing the first store in Arrow Rock.

In Arrow Rock, John B. Jones became friends with genre painter of the frontier and Missouri Whig politician George Caleb Bingham. Bingham is featured in Jones's novel, The Life and Adventures of a Country Merchant (1854). Bingham may have reciprocated. According to Robin Grey, in Bingham's famous election "genre" studies, Jones is the seated figure on the left in the painting Canvassing for a Vote (1851—52).