When he was six, his family emigrated to Boston; the voyage was so harsh that his sister died, a brother went mad, and Jones was blind for six weeks.

As a young man he studied elocution with Daniel Webster, spoke at Faneuil Hall and won medals in rhetoric.

[12] By June plans were made for a benefit appearance for Count Joannes (for so he now called himself) on the New York stage, possibly as Hamlet, and this was being reported as a joke - his vanity and assumption of a title had turned many against him.

[13] Now living in Massachusetts, in June 1860 the Count Joannes filed a lawsuit for libel over a letter from a clergyman attempting to dissuade a woman from marrying him.

Count Joannes then commenced a series of libel suits in Massachusetts against various persons who he claimed impugned his sanity or his good name.

The New York Tribune called the claim a fraud, and the Count sued editor Horace Greeley for libel.

He had few clients, but spent much time attending courts, sometimes rising to interject comments or protest errors in the proceedings.

He announced that he had found the murderer of Benjamin Nathan, a certain James Hughes, but a grand jury failed to agree with him.

[20] On April 29, 1871 the Count played Richard III at the Academy of Music to considerable applause; this was perhaps his last performance that did not draw jeers and catcalls.

By 1878 at a New York performance of Richard III "scarcely a word said on the stage was audible, so loud and continuous were the cat-calls, laughter, and sarcastic comments and advice given by the spectators to the players.

He filed lawsuits against Horace Greeley, Edward Sothern, Massachusetts governor John Albion Andrew,[24] writer Francis Henry Underwood, The New York Times, and others.

[25] He also had correspondence with the Duke of Wellington,[26] Lord Byron's mistress Teresa, Contessa Guiccioli,[27] architect Alexander Jackson Davis,[28] actor Edwin Forrest[29] and many others.