In this epitaph, the local poetess, Minerva Jones, paints herself as a victim of the town's hooting mobs, as well as a victim abandoned and pregnant by another Spoon River figure, "'Butch' Weldy," and ultimately as a victim of a surgical operation conducted by another Spoon River... Minerva Jones was born in Spencer County, Indiana on January 7, 1837. Her parents were Benjamin Jones and Elizabeth Spooner. She had two siblings: a brother named James who would later follow his sister to death under mysterious circumstances and a sister named Nancy who lived until she was four years old. When Minerva was only nine years old, her father died and her mother soon after married 'Weldy' Weldy a widower with three children of his own. The Weldom family moved to Illinois where they settled near New Salem, which at that time was a small village near the present-day city of Peoria. Minerva and her stepfather went to school together in New Salem where she met her future husband William Henry Harrison Jones. They fell in love and when he proposed to her, she said yes. However, just six days before their wedding, William was killed in a railroad accident. He was only thirty years old. After his death, Minerva decided to go to Paris, France so she could study music. There she gave birth to a son whom she named Benjamin Franklin after his father.