People in Lancasterville talked about the funeral of Bartlett Jones for many years. At Jones' request there was no coffin. He was buried in a lot on Main Street in a bedstead with half-high posts made to Jones' order. The bed was draped with black cambric curtains which were left half open so that mourners could view the body before burial.

Bartlett C. Jones was 43 years of age when he died on February 2, 1831. He was born December 27, 1787 in Prince William County, VA.

When Jones was a small boy, he suffered a dislocated hip. All of his life he limped and needed a crutch and a stick.

Jones graduated from Jefferson Medical School in Philadelphia in 1806, and came to Lancasterville with his brother, Dr. Churchill Jones. In 1810, Bartlett Jones married Eliza Jane Dunlap, a member of a prominent family.

His medical practice was immensely successful. His ledger book, which is deposited in the Lancaster County Library, reveals that he treated very prominent families in a practice that reached as far as Salisbury, NC, and Winnsboro, SC.

The story is told that Lancasterville's richest man, William McKenna, quarreled with Dr. Jones. McKenna thrust a dagger in the body of Jones, which supposedly shortened his life. Yet when McKenna became ill shortly after, he insisted that he be treated by Bartlett Jones.

Like other physicians of his time, Dr. Jones made house calls. He travelled in a gig with a body-servant named Cupid.

I his ledger, Jones placed the words "visit" and "call" to distinguish whether he saw the patient in his office or at the patient's home. If he stayed overnight, it was a "visit nocturnal." When he visited General James Blair's spouse, he marked the visit as 35 miles, 2 days, and charged $25.

Jones' surgical skills were greatly admired. The claim has been made that Bartlet Jones performed the first successful lithotomy (removal of a kidney stone). The date was May 26, 1818, when Dr. Hall of Chesterville called Jones to operate on the son of a widow. Later, from the son of a Mr. McDonald of Chesterfield, Jones took "a stone as large as a hen's egg."

Jones had a private hospital in Lancaster as well as a store, B. Jones & Co., that sold cloth, shoes, hats, 'segars,' and snuff, along with the liniment, paregoric, calomel, sulphur, emetics and other medicines he prescribed.

Jones' daughter, Eliza Theresa, married Dr. J. Marion Sims, who became world famous. Dr. Sims, known as "The Father of Gynecology," treated the Queen Victoria of England, Princess Eugenie of France and the Empress of Austria. He received medals and awards from every major European country.

Sims founded two hospitals, the Women's Hospital of New York, and a clinic that was the forerunner of the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Institute. He also invented many medical instruments that he refused to patent, and insisted that they were a gift to mankind.

After the death of Dr. Jones, his widow moved with her sons to Alabama. Eliza Jane Jones died at Warm Springs, Ga., November 1858, and is buried beside her mother in Montgomery.

In the year 1900, the grave of Dr. Jones was moved from the northwest corner of Lancaster's East Arch and South White streets to the Old Presbyterian Church cemetery, where he was buried near one of his daughters, Mrs. James Hervey Witherspoon, Jr.

Still unanswered is the question as to why Dr. Jones chose to be buried in a bed rather than a coffin.