Orlando Jones was born to Rowland and Anne (probably ) Jones on 31 December 1681 (
O.S.) in the
Colony of Virginia. Rowland Jones had been born in 1644 in
Swinbrook and educated at
Merton College, Oxford, before moving to Virginia and became the first minister of
Bruton Parish, a
Church of England parish church in
Middle Plantation. Anne Jones was her husband's second wife. On Rowland Jones's 1688 death, he willed that some of his land totaling and property would be given as a life-right to Anne, which would pass to Orlando on her death. Jones was educated at the
grammar school of the
College of William & Mary in Middle Plantation. The college had been recently established when Jones began his attendance. In 1698, the statehouse at the colonial capital of
Jamestown burned.
Francis Nicholson, the
governor of Virginia, and
James Blair, the
college's president, conceived a plan to convince the
Virginia General Assembly to move the capital to Middle Plantation. The subsequent
1699 May Day orations, performed in front of leading Virginians at the
College Building in Middle Plantation, featured five student speeches ("Scholastick Exercises") that discussed the importance of the college and proposed moving the capital. Jones is believe to have delivered the third oration, which directly proposed Middle Plantation as a suitable candidate for becoming the colony's new capital. The third oration was again read before the General Assembly on 18 May 1699. Later that day, the
House of Burgesses the General Assembly's
lower house voted in favor of moving the capital to Middle Plantation, which was renamed to
Williamsburg. By 1702, Nicholson and Blair had become political rivals. Following a
barring out a ritual in which students lock a school to faculty in order secure an earlier beginning to the
Christmas vacation by the students of the grammar school in early December 1702, Blair claimed that Nicholson had instructed the students to use a loaded firearm and to kill Blair. As part of the investigation that followed, Jones gave an
affidavit in May 1705 that said barring out the faculty had been an annual event at the grammar school (except for in 1700) and that these events had never been performed with the intention of doing harm. Jones was not in Virginia during the 1702 barring out, having travelled to England earlier that year. In his statement, Jones also indicated that he had been an
usher at the grammar school, Following the barring out allegations, Blair succeeded in ousting Nicholson from the governorship in 1705. It is partially through this son's name that Orlando Jones's mother's maiden name is inferred as "Lane". Through Frances and her husband, the politician
John Dandridge, Orlando Jones became the maternal grandfather of
Martha Washington, the wife of
George Washington. The Jones family enjoyed the growing wealth of the
planter class in the early 18th-century, living in a superior house to those of both Rowland Jones and Gideon Macon. Their brick house of five or six rooms was near to both
Queen's Creek, which permitted access to the York River, and to the urban amenities of Williamsburg. They also owned a rental tenement house on Duke of Gloucester Street in Williamsburg. Though he was not a major planter, Jones owned 21 enslaved persons. A house, in ruins by 1939, on the road between
Barhamsville and
Slaterville in New Kent County has been traditionally described as having belonged to the Jones family. In 1714 and 1715, Jones was elected as a burgess representing King William County. He died at his Queen's Creek property on 12 June 1719 and was buried inside Bruton Parish. Martha Jones had been initially buried in New Kent County but the body was reinterred next to her husband under a tombstone in the
chancel erected by his second wife. His will had instructed Mary Jones to sell the rental property in Williamsburg and live on his plantation. She sold the rental property to John James Flournoy, a
Huguenot watchmaker, in 1719. She then married Flournoy and moved her children with her to Williamsburg. To his daughter Frances, Jones left property that included ten enslaved persons. Though the Williamsburg house destroyed, probably soon after Orlando Jones's death by fire or to accommodate a change to the street's grading, it was reconstructed in the 1940s by
Colonial Williamsburg. ==References==