He also remarried during the Civil War to Aurora Serena Elmore, who was descended from Representative Joseph Brevard of South Carolina and would bear seven boys (Thomas's half-brothers) during their marriage.

His son Thomas Goode (1787–1858), Martha's father, helped establish the Homestead European-style spa in Wythe County, Virginia.

His son Dr. Thomas Williamson Jones (1788–1824), graduated from the University of North Carolina before he married Mary Armistead Goode.

[4] Thomas had a sister, Mary, who had been born in Atlanta in 1847 and would have five more siblings who survived infancy before the Civil War began and seven half-brothers from his father's second marriage.

[5] During the Civil War, in winter quarters in Petersburg, Virginia, Jones had begun studying William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England.

On May 1, 1861, after Virginia's secession vote, about 200 cadets (including Jones) joined Professor and Major General Stonewall Jackson in fighting for the Confederate States Army.

Meanwhile, Jones returned to Montgomery and enlisted as a private in the Partisan Rangers, Company K of the 53rd Alabama Regiment, but he was soon promoted to sergeant.

On April 9, 1865, he physically carried the truce flag on his sword while under fire, delivering Lee's surrender, and he witnessed the final ceremony at Appomattox Court House.

[7] Returning from the Civil War, Goode claimed an inheritance from his mother and purchased 750 acres in southern Montgomery County, Alabama in 1865.

The Daily Picayune allied with the Democratic Party, decried "Negro rule," and proposed racial segregation although, unlike more radical newspapers, it also advocated educating black children.

[8] Jones' appointment as the reporter of decisions for the Supreme Court of Alabama by Chief Justice Elisha Peck also helped sustain his legal practice from 1870 to 1880.

He also spoke at Jefferson Davis's last visit to Montgomery in 1886 and gave Memorial Day addresses in Atlanta in 1887 and at the tomb of Ulysses Grant in New York City in 1902.

Instead of running for re-election to the legislature, Jones returned to private practice to raise funds to campaign for governor, which was successful.

He defeated the farmer Reuben Kolb and several others in the Democratic convention after several ballots and Republican candidate Benjamin M. Long handily in the general election.

[14] In his first two-year term as governor, Jones proposed a constitutional amendment to allow long legislative sessions and local communities to levy taxes to finance education and internal improvements.

Alabama House Speaker Frank L. Pettus and Senate President John C Compton were also from the Black Belt and ignored Kolb's investigation request.

Thus, he did not challenge John Tyler Morgan for the US Senate seat but remained politically active in supporting US President Grover Cleveland.

Jones rehabilitated his political fortunes in 1897 by remaining in Montgomery, despite a yellow fever epidemic in the coastal South, his policies being fumigation, prompt burials, and a quarantine supported by armed guards.

He opposed labor unions but supported the 14th Amendment and was a friend of black leader Booker T. Washington, to whom Jones owed his appointment as a federal judge.

[20] During his tenure, Judge Jones heard civil rights cases, took stands against lynching and refused to allow the state's convict lease system to become de facto slavery.