HISTORY OF KENTUCKY AND KENTUCKIANS, E. Polk Johnson, three volumes, Lewis Publishing Co., New York & Chicago, 1912. Common version, Vol. III, p. 1187. [Franklin County] ERNEST RICHARD JONES--A man well-known and esteemed in this part of the state is Ernest Richard Jones, county superintendent of schools for Franklin county, an office to who duties he has for the five years past brought a great deal of efficiency and discrimination. Mr. Jones shares the fortune of so much of America's representative citizenship of having been born on the farm, his birth having occurred in Fayette county, May 30, 1861, and his parents being John Hawkin and Agnes Elizabeth (Mitchell) Jones, both of them likewise Fayette county natives. The father answered to the dual calling of a carpenter and farmer, and was skilled in the trade which took him over a good part of that section of the county. The paternal grandfather was a native of the neighboring state of Virginia. Ernest Richard Jones was reared upon the farm, moved to Franklin county in 1875, and received his education in the public schools, this being effectively supplemented by a normal course which prepared him for those pedagogic duties for which he was naturally inclined. For a while, however, he engaged in farming, and met with a good deal of success in this line, but at the age of twenty-eight he took his place at [sic] a teacher in the public schools of Franklin county. His career as a teacher and instructor of the young was of eighteen years duration, and fifteen years were spent in Switzer, Kentucky. In 1905 he was elected county superintendent of schools, and in 1909 was re-elected, now serving upon his second term of four years. He has also given excellent service as treasurer of the Educational Improvement Commission of Kentucky, which was organized in 1906 and has done its share toward the elevation of general educational standards. He is connected in a prominent capacity with the Kentucky Educational Association, being the present vice-president, and since its organization he has been one of the directors. Special distinction must attach to him as one of the prime movers of the cause, and as chairman of the legislative committee of the Kentucky Educational Improvement Association, which drafted the bill known as the County School District bill, which passed into a law in 1908 by the action of the general assembly. The law gives Kentucky an educational system that ranks favorably with any of her sister states. Mr. Jones gives support, loyal and staunch, to the politics and principles of the Democratic party, and takes a sincere interest in all those matters which pertain to the general welfare. He is a member of the Baptist Association and is moderator of the Franklin Baptist Association. His pleasant fraternal associations extend to the Independent Order of the Odd Fellows and to the Knights of Pythias. Mr. Jones was married, February 8, 1881, to Miss Mattie Switzer, of Franklin county. They are the parents of the following five children: William B., Fannie, Grover and Thomas and Betty, twins. Jones Mitchell Switzer = Fayette-KY VA http://www.rootsweb.com/~kygenweb/kybiog/franklin/jones.er.txt