Folklorist noted for his work on murder tales, ghost stories, and folk art, and as founder
of the Cooperstown graduate programs, the first American graduate training program
emphasizing material culture. Born June 28, 1908, in Albany, New York, Jones
graduated from Hamilton College in 1930 and received his doctorate from Columbia
University in 1941. His dissertation was published the following year as Clubs of the
Georgian Rakes. Jones started his career as a teacher at Long Island University in 1931.
Later he taught at Syracuse University and at the State College forTeachers in Albany. In
1947 Jones became director of the New York State Historical Association and the
Farmer’s Museum, a post he retained until his retirement in 1972.
Jones’ early folklore interests centered on murder and ghosdore, and he published
important work in both areas. His 1936 article “The Berlin Murder Case” traced the story
behind a New York murder ballad, and his 1944 “The Ghosts of New York: An
Analytical Study” was a groundbreaking examination of the ghostlore of the Empire
State. Although Jones never lost interest in either subject, his later works on
thesetopics,suchas ThingsThat Go Bumpin the Night (1959), were in a popular rather than
an academic vein.
After 1950 Jones’ turned his scholarly sights on American folk art; two of his
publications on this subject are American Folk Art (1952), coauthored with Marshall
Davidson; and New-Found Folk Art of the Young Republic (1960), coauthored with his
wife, Agnes Halsey Jones. In 1982 Syracuse University Press published Three Eyes on
the Past: Exploring New York Folklife, a collection of his writings dealing with history,
folklore, and material culture.
Jones was much more than just a library scholar; he was also an avid collector of folk
art. Largely due to his efforts, the Fenimore House Collection at the New York State
Historical Association became one of the outstanding collections in America. He was
also largely responsible for establishing the Cooperstown Graduate Programs in 1964.
Here a group of thirty students could obtain M.A. degrees in museology or American folk
culture. This program was generally recognized as meeting a need for professionalism in
both the museum field and American folklife studies. Unfortunately, the American folkculture program was phased out in 1979, though the museology program continues.
Jones was a Fellow of the American Folklore Society. After a long illness, he died in
Haverford, Pennsylvania, on November 25, 1990.
W.K.McNeil
References
Somewhere West of Albany: A Festschrift in Honor of Louis C. Jones. 1975. Cooperstown, NY:
New York Folklore Society