Frank M. Jones Killes Moses Thompson, Illinois.

Mason county, Illinois.

In 1864, a few days after the Presidential election, when political bitterness and strife had reached and assumed its most desperate depth. Frank M. Jones, who came into this vicinity from Virginia about a year before the tragical event now under consideration, had, from the accident of his nativity, coupled with his undisguised and outspoken sentiments on the political question of the day, incurred the hostility of several parties of the opposite political belief, which was fully reciprocated by Jones, and the bitterness soon ripened into a crisis.

Jones was teaching school at the time, a mile and a half south of town, and, learning that a man from Salt creek Township, named Moses Thompson, had been in town several days watching for him, to "settle a grudge" that had been engendered on election day, about a  week before, he armed himself with a double barrel shotgun, and, in the evening, after school was dismissed, proceeded to town.

He saw Thompson out on the south side of a saloon which was kept in a building a short distance northwest of where the La Forge grain elevator now stands, and heard his threats against him upon which, from the rear of A. & S. D. Swing's store, through which he passed, he fired upon Thompson, mortally wounding him, from the effects of which he died next day. Jones leisurely departed, and was never captured and brought to trial. It is reported that he went to Missouri and, a few years after, was himself shot and killed.