Raconteur of tall tales. Born in Roseburg, Oregon, Jones was the son of William Samson
Jones and Elizabeth (Epperson) Jones. His parents and grandparents were Oregon Trail
pioneers of the 1850s who settled in the Umpqua Valley. William and Elizabeth Jones
divorced in 1883. In 1890 Hathaway joined his father at his gold claim at Battle Bar deep
in the canyon of the Rogue River. With little education, Jones became a contract mail
carrier. He picked up mail at Dothan on the West Fork of Cow Creek and traveled by
mule team over fifty miles of mountainous trail to Illahe and Agness on the Rogue River.
The mail then began a forty-mile journey by boat to the southwest coast of Oregon. Jones
continued in this enterprise for forty-two years.
During his solitary treks through the mountains, Jones developed a rich repertoire of
tall tales. His stories included three cycles: stories about his grandfather Ike (a wise old
man of the woods), stories about his father, Samson (who possessed phenomenal
strength), and stories about himself. In his tales about falling rocks, fantastic snow drifts,
gigantic rattlesnakes, fierce panthers, and flying bears, Jones came to terms with the
existential threats that lurked on all sides. Jones spun traditional tales, and in several
cases he drew upon a motif or an event in a story he had heard from someone else and
relocated the tale in the Rogue River wilderness. In 1937 his mule threw Jones over a
cliff to his death.
More than fifty of Jones’ tales survive, and many are yet told in the wild country of
southwestern Oregon. Arthur Dorn began writing down the repertoire when he settled in
Agness in the mid-1930s. Dorn worked for the WPA (Works Progress Administration)
Oregon Folklore Project. Jones’ tales appeared in Nancy Wilson Ross’ Farthest Reach
(1941) and in a 1946 article by Jean Muir in the Saturday Evening Post. Stephen Dow
Beckham first heard the tales in the 1940s, and between 1965 and 1973 he collected
many from informants residing in southwestern Oregon. The Jones stories are one of the
largest collections from a single teller of tall tales in the United States.
Stephen Dow Beckham
References
Beckham, Stephen Dow, ed. [1974] 1991. TallTalesfrom Rogue River: The Yarns ofHathaway
Jones. Corvallis: Oregon State University Press.
Riddle, Claude. 1954. In the Hills with Hathaway. In In the Happy Hills: A Story of Early Day
Deer Hunting. Roseburg, OR: M-M Printers.