Augustus Jones (C. 1757-1836)

Augustus Jones (C. 1757-1836). . , Augustus Jones was born of Welsh ancestry in the Hudson River valley circa 1757. He received survey training in New York City in 1786 and he moved to Niagara in 1787. From then until 1789, to meet the needs of Loyalist refugees, Jones worked under Deputy Surveyor Philip Frey, helping lay out all or part of eleven townships in the Niagara Peninsula, including Barton, Saltfleet, Binbrook and Grimsby., In 1789, Jones replaced Frey and, for the next decade, surveyed thousands of acres of frontier wilderness. His work included the town site Lenox (later Niagara-on-the-Lake), the greater part of York Township and a portion of the town of York (Toronto). He formalized the boundaries of the Six Nations Tract along the Grand River and laid out Upper Canada's major military roads, Dundas Street (Governor's Road) and Yonge Street. He is regarded as the outstanding surveyor in Upper Canada's early history., When his career as a government surveyor ended in 1800, he retired to his extensive land holdings in Stoney Creek. His eight-room home overlooked a lagoon near present-day Confederation Park. In 1817, he moved to Cold Springs (near Paris on the Grand River) where his personal friend, Mohawk leader Joseph Brant, had provided him with 1200 acres of land along the Governor's Road. Jones became actively involved with the local Indigenous Peoples and died there in 1836. He is buried in an unmarked grave alongside his son, Reverend Peter Jones, in Greenwood Cemetery, Brantford.