The Reverend Hugh Jones (1691–1760) is the most famous and accomplished of a sometimes confusing array of Anglican clergymen of the same name from the American colonies of Virginia and Maryland.
Jones is best known for his authorship of The Present State of Virginia, and a short view of Maryland and North Carolina (London, 1724).
For several years he taught mathematics at The College of William and Mary, in Williamsburg, Virginia, where Jones Hall is named for him.
Alumni records at Oxford University list his matriculation to Jesus College in March 1708, age 17, placing his birth around 1691.
[1] In a deposition given at age 49 (1740), he said "That he learnt Arithmetick at School, studied Geometry, Geography and Astronomy in the University of Oxford;" that he there took the degrees of B.A.
"[5] Hugh Jones's most well known work is based on his first several years of residence in America, and remains a primary resource for Virginia's colonial history.
The book was occasioned, he wrote, by his finding that "few people in England (even many concerned in public affairs of this kind) have correct Notions of the true State of the Plantations [Colonies], and having been eagerly applied to frequently by Persons of the greatest Figure, Experience and Judgment in political and national Concerns, for Information concerning all the Circumstances of Virginia, [he] was requested to digest methodically and publish what [he] knew and thought of these Matters."
About the slavery he encountered on the plantations he observed that the slaves' work "is not very laborious, their greatest Hardship consisting in that they and their Posterity are not at their own Liberty or Disposal, but are the Property of their Owners; and when they are free, they know not how to provide so well for themselves generally; neither did they live so plentifully nor (many of them) so easily in their own Country, where they are made Slaves to one another, or taken Captive by their Enemies."
Included in the work also is this erroneous prediction: "There can be no Room for real Apprehension of Danger of a Revolt of the Plantations in future Ages.
"[9] It is not clear if Jones used it when he returned to America, as he was fully occupied with clerical duties, or that anyone else taught from it: only two paper copies of this short book remain, one in the British Library and one at Columbia University.
For tho' all nations count universally by tens (originally occasioned by the number of digits on both hands) yet 8 is a far more complete and commodious number; since it is divisible into halves, quarters, and half quarters (or units) without a fraction, of which subdivision ten is uncapable...." In the treatise on Octave computation Jones concluded: "Arithmetic by Octaves seems most agreeable to the Nature of Things, and therefore may be called Natural Arithmetic in Opposition to that now in Use, by Decades; which may be esteemed Artificial Arithmetic.