John Allen Jones left his wife Martha and 3 young children sometime before 1870, and they stayed with her father John Vickers. Family stories conflict on why he left. One version says he was beaten and run off by either the Ku Klux Clan or the Carpetbaggers. Others say he left to find work, but when he came back to get his family, John Vickers would not let them leave. He married Ella Wilson and had a second family, with given names very similar to the names of his children with Martha. Before he died, he told his second family about the family he had left behind. One son, John, came to meet William Thomas, his half brother. Will did not want anything to do with this second family, but John did attend the funeral of William Thomas.
The 1900 US Census for Sand Springs, Limestone Co, AL, lists Wesley and Martha June. It also states that Martha had given birth to 10 children but had only 3 alive. Martha's stepson Samuel Baggett and his family lived next door at the time, along with three Shannon families.